bUNG MAN'S RELIGION 
^D HIS FATHER'S FAITH 



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A Young Man's 
Religion 

And His Father's Faith 



BY 



N.'^kfcGEE WATERS 



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NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 



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UBRAHYof OONGHtSSi 
Two Copies r(ev.'trf< vtpo l| 

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30 






I COPY t 



Copyright, 1905, by T, F. Crow;e// 4^ Co. 
Published, September, 1905 



TO 
THE MEN YOUNG AND OLD 

OF MY 

BINGHAMTON AND BROOKLYN PARISHES 

WHOSE UNFAILING FRIENDSHIP IS TO ME 
A JOY UNSPEAKABLE 



TITLES OF CHAPITERS 



I. The Young Man and His Father's Faith Page 3 

II. What is Religion ? 31 

III. What is Christianity ? 73 

IV. What is a Christian ? 107 
Y. The Programme of the Christian Life 141 

VI. The Reagent for Christian Character 175 

VII. A Young Man and His Mother's Bible 211 

VIII. Why Young Men go to Church 253 






[1] 



His mother said unto him, ^'Sorij why hast thou thus 
dealt with us ? behold, thy father and I have soicght thee 
sorrowing." 

And he said unto them, "How is it that ye sought me f 
wist ye not that I must be about my Father^ s business.'^ 

Luke 2:48-49. 

And these mounts of anguish number, 

How each generation learned 
One new word of that grand Credo, which 

In prophet hearts hath burned; 
Since the first man stood God-conquered, 

With his face to heaven upturned. 

Lowell. 

/ remember the gleams and glooms that dart 

Across the school-boy^ s brain; 
The song and the silence in the heart, 
That in part are prophesies, and in part 

Are longings wild and vain. 
And the voice of that fitful song 

Sings on and is never still: 

"A boy^s will is the wind^s will. 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 

Longfellow. 



[2] 



CHAPTER FIRST 




YEAR or so ago, at one 
of the clubs, a dinner was 
given by a rich man to his 
son upon his twenty-third 
birthday. The young man 
was just graduated from 
college, and the father, with a proud heart 
had asked in half a hundred of his own 
friends to meet his boy. It was a proud mo- 
ment — proud for the father, and proud for 
the boy. It was like the old Roman feast when 
the eldest boy assumed the Toga Virilis. 
Tears were in more than one eye when, in 
simple hearted speech and honest pride, the 
father said : " He's a good boy with a clean 
record. Neither Harry nor I know what he 
will do, nor how far he will go; but I want 
him to know his father's friends and be 
worthy of them." The speech-making went 
[3] 



round. Merchant princes, august judges, 
statesmen, all joined heartily in the feast of 
friendship, and made pledges for the young 
man's future. At last the father arose and 
asked a minister to speak to the sentiment^ — 
" A Young Man's Religion and its Relation 
to his Father's Faith." 

The discussion became informal, earnest, gen- 
eral. Some facts were brought out. The 
father was a Presbyterian Elder ; the son had 
not joined any church. He used the words of 
Mr. Lincoln: "I have never joined myself 
with any church because I found difficulty 
in giving assent, without mental reservation, 
to the long and complicated statements of 
Christian doctrine which characterize their 
articles of belief and confessions of faith. 
When any church will inscribe over its altars, 
as its sole substance of both law and gospel, 
' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy 
mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,' that 
church shall I join with all my heart and 
soul." 

[4] 



and l^fjs fati^et'0 ^atti^ 

The father had been converted in a most 
dramatic manner; the son counted himself a 
Christian, but knew not the day or the hour. 
" Indeed," he said, " I have always been a 
Christian." The father believed the Bible to 
be an infallible book, and without question 
accepted its every statement as a literal fact. 
The son regarded the Bible as a library of 
religious literature, to be studied, questioned, 
and judged as any other literature. The 
father thought of creation as an act ; of con- 
version as an act ; of sanctification as an act ; 
of salvation as an experience. The son 
thought of creation as a growth. And in his 
thought salvation was character, and Evolu- 
tion was the key to revelation and experience. 
Father and son were both sincere, but they 
viewed the great problems of Faith from 
different standpoints. They could not reach 
the same conclusions, because they started 
from different premises. The eighteenth and 
twentieth centuries do not see things with the 
same eyes. Sixty and twenty do not think 
alike. 

[5] 



This is a picture of many a family. 
It has in it the elements of pathos and the 
possibility of tragedy. It is a hard time for 
the boy when he outgrows his father's opin- 
ion. It is a hard time for the father when the 
son, true to his own personality, claims the 
responsibility of his own life. It threw a 
shadow over the home in Nazareth. For a 
time Mary thought her son crazy. But Mary 
waited, and Jesus was obedient, and the rift 
passed. 

But alas! too often at such times the father 
loses patience, and the son forgets to be 
respectful, and there is a strife between son 
and sire. Moreover men are very sensitive 
about their religious ideas. Men go crazj 
about religion. Men turn persecutors for re- 
ligion's sake. Religious disputes are acri- 
monious, and religious wars are cruel. All the 
wisdom of any age is sorely needed to under- 
stand a young man's religion and determine 
its relation to his father's faith. Both the 
man and the boy should pray for guidance. 
Often they fail to understand one another. 
[6] V. 



I heard an old man say, " The world isn't 
like it was in the olden days. Children were 
then seen and not heard; now they know it 
all. People do not go to church like they 
used to. People do not keep Sunday like they 
used to. People do not read their Bible like 
they used to. The church does not have re- 
vivals like it used to. People do not get con- 
verted like they used to. Joining the church 
does not mean what it used to. Young peo- 
ple to-day are taught all sorts of strange 
notions and they do not believe things we 
used to. It is an age of worldliness and free- 
thinking. Religion is at ebb tide. The church 
is going to decay. Our young people have 
lost their faith." And the old man was sin- 
cere and he was sad. 

I heard a young man talking, and he said: 
" I am glad I didn't live in the days when 
father was young, and Sunday began on Sat- 
urday night, and they went to church three 
times in one day. The gayest thing of all 
the week was the prayer-meeting. They were 
credulous then and believed in the super- 
[7] 



natural. They were always meeting miracles 
by the way. Their creeds were long and for- 
mal and harsh, and all they knew about 
God was fear. They were Bibliolaters and 
regarded the Bible as a magical book. They 
worshipped it as the Roman Catholics do the 
bones of the Saints. I have got away from 
all that. I go to church when I feel like it, 
and play golf when I do not. I do not believe 
in creeds. I do not know what to think about 
the supernatural. As for miracles I never met 
any. The Golden Rule is a good enough 
creed for me. It does not matter much any- 
way what we believe. Our old minister was 
a dear old fossil, and father was a fogy. I 
cannot believe like them: but I love them. I 
believe in them. They had religion, if any- 
body ever did. I believe in their clean lives, 
and I wish I had their sure faith." 
Now both the old man and the young one 
are right, and both are wrong. The old man 
is right when he thinks the young man lack- 
ing in respect. Irreverence is the besetting 
sin of youth. In the Fifth Commandment 
[8] 



and f ijs mW^ Mti) 

Moses made a law against it. The old 
man is right when he says that the times 
have changed, and the customs have 
changed, and the creeds have changed. Only 
we have changed more than he dreams. We 
live in a world of change. Snakes change 
their skins once a year. Once a year the earth 
has a new bridal dress. Truth also grows and 
outgrows. Every generation demands a new 
and larger expression. We do live in a dif- 
ferent world from that in which our fathers 
lived. 

We live after Columbus.^ He is the man who, 
with ninety others, defied the wisdom of their 
age and the superstition of their time, and 
took their lives in their own hands, and im- 
piously sailed away into the darkness of that 
sea which was believed to be the fringe on 
the edge of the world. When months had 
passed, and they were long given up for 
dead, one breaking day their eyes rested 
upon a land-locked horizon, and the stillness 
of a lost world and the knowledge of an old 
^Jefferson's "Things Fundamental." 

[9] 



one were disturbed by the shout of " Land ! 
Land ! '' Our fathers had supposed that the 
world was a flat field, and lo ! it was found 
out to be a round ball. That day the world 
was multiplied by two. 

We live in the days since Martin Luther. For 
one thousand years the priests had kept the 
conscience of every man. For a thousand 
years darkness had rested upon the earth. 
Then a German priest, heavy hearted with 
the ignorance of the people, and aflame with 
wrath because of the corruption in the church 
and the oppression of the priests, put a 
trumpet to his lips and blew on it such a 
blast that the slumbering masses of Europe 
were awakened as from a dream. And these 
were his words, " The just shall live by 
faith." When he was cited for trial, he stood 
up in the presence of the priests and the 
powers of the church and thundered back — 
" Convince me of error from the Holy Scrip- 
tures and I will cheerfully recant. But I will 
not be silenced by man's wisdom." Our fathers 
had supposed that the salvation of a soul 
[10] 



was in the keeping of the priest; but Luther 
made us understand that every man could 
come alone, without a priest, into the pres- 
ence of God. That day the world learned that 
religion was larger than men had dreamed. 
We live in the days since Copernicus and 
Galileo. One of them discovered a truth and 
was afraid to publish it to the world; the 
other one published that truth and went to 
the prison and the rack for his deed. But 
these are the men who have taught us that 
the world was not the centre of the universe, 
but instead only a very little star. And that 
with other stars it walks by day and by night 
around the great, wonderful sun. That day 
we found out that the universe was a thou- 
sand times larger than our fathers had 
dreamed. 

Other scholars came. One, a little while ago, 
was a student of books, and lands, and seas. 
He read God's handwriting upon the rocks 
and stars. Gathering up bits of wisdom from 
field and mountain, mica-flake and ocean 
ooze, he pieced together the great story of 

[11] 



God's creation. And lo ! the world was not 
made in a week and man in a moment, but 
instead — 

^' I doubt not through the ages an increasing pur- 
pose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the 
process of the suns.[^ 

Evolution is a larger story of divine provi- 
dence than any of the fathers dreamed. 
Other scholars came. And these began to 
study the Bible and lo ! instead of a book, 
a library; instead of a proof text, a litera- 
ture; instead of a dictation, an experience; 
instead of a typewriter for an inspired man, 
a poet, a seer, a martyr. And the Bible 
became greater and grander than ever 
before. Revelation instead of being a tiny 
lake, crystal in depth, and lost amid the hills, 
was like the boundless ocean, thundering on 
all shores and refreshing all lands. The 
Bible took on a new splendor and a new dig- 
nity that day. 

Aye, the old man was right, we do live in a 
[12] 



and i^ijj ifati^er'js faiti^ 

new world. Things have changed and the boy 
cannot think as his father thought. Look at 
him a moment. He was reared in a Christian 
home and learned to pray when he learned 
to talk. His mother taught him whole 
chapters of the Bible by heart. He was 
taught to believe that the Bible was literal 
prose, a dry-as-dust history. He believed 
that Joshua told the sun to stand still. He 
believed that a fish swallowed Jonah. He 
believed that God made the earth in six days. 
He grows up and he goes to college. He finds 
out that there was not one flood, but many 
floods. He finds out that the sun always stood 
still. He finds out that the earth was made 
through a long process of millions of years 
and is still being made. Now what is he to 
say? "Lost my faith?" "I must throw 
away my mother's Bible? " Not at all. Those 
opinions were not faith: mere credulity is 
not faith. For a thousand years the univer- 
sities taught and the church taught that the 
sun revolved around the earth, now because 
we have found out that the earth revolves 
[13] 



a Poung jEan'jS aseltgt'on 

around the sun, astronomy is not destroyed, 
and we do not say that we will have to give 
up the sun. We have simply found out more 
about it than our fathers knew. 
When we outgrow the coats we wore at ten 
years old and put on a coat of twenty-one 
years, that does not mean we do not believe 
in clothes. We have only grown. So knowl- 
edge grows. Revelation grows. We have not 
lost our faith: We have added to it; we 
have enlarged it. Faith is not an emotion. 
Faith is not credulity. This point needs 
a good deal of emphasis. For on every 
side we hear prophets, Jeremiahs, moan- 
ing and sighing, " For the faith once 
delivered to the Saints." They tell us that 
the cause of all modern ills is the new the- 
ology, and their cry is, let us get back to 
the old gospel. 

I wonder where they can find the old gospel 
they seek. If they go back to Jonathan 
Edwards, he was driven out of Northampton 
because he was a heretic. If they go back to 
John Wesley, he was stoned out of the Eng- 
[14] 



and 1$\$ fatW^ Wti^ 

lish Church because he was unsound. If they 
go back to John Calvin, they have gone back 
to the Prince of new theologies. If they go 
back to Paul, they will find that he was 
hated by the Jewish nation for his heresy; 
and if they go back to Christ they will 
find that he was crucified on account of his 
doctrine. 

Nay! in every age the great leader has 
always proclaimed a new theology. We have 
a new astronomy. We have a new education. 
We have a new geology and we must always 
have a new theology. Truth grows. To keep 
faith in astronomy is not to go back to the 
day of Copernicus. To keep faith in educa- 
tion is not to go back to the days of Eras- 
mus. To keep faith with Methodism is not 
to go back to the time of Wesley; it is like 
Wesley to be in the very front of progress. 
To keep faith with the Puritans is not to go 
back to the days of John Robinson: but it 
is to keep firm hold of his great saying, 
" God has yet more light to break out of his 
word." 

[15] 



a ^oung jEan'jcJ Beltijton 

" New occasions teach new duties ; Time 

Makes ancient good uncouth. 
They must upward still and onward 

Who would keep abreast of Truth; 
Lo ! before us gleam her camp-fires ! we 

Ourselves must Pilgrims be; 
Launch our Mayflower and steer boldly 

Through the desperate winter sea, 
Nor attempt the Future^s portal^ 

With the Pastes blood-rusted key.'' 

'The young man is right when he claims the 
responsibiHty of his own life. Personality is 
sacred, and not even a father may violate 
it. No man, howsoever wise or howsoever be- 
loved, can be judgment, or conscience, or 
faith, for any other man. I will listen to a 
man's reason, but I cannot believe because 
he tells me to. I must live my own life in 
my own way. I must have my own experience. 
I must write my own creeds. 
But the young man is wrong when he be- 
lieves that wisdom was born with him, or 
when he scoffs at the customs or faiths of 
the olden times. 

We are our father's children, but we little 
[16] 



remember what our fathers have done for us. 
We are heirs of far-off lands and ancient 
ages, and yet we have seldom thought of our 
indebtedness to the past. We remember the 
name of Guttenberg as that of the man who 
invented movable type, but we have never 
stopped to think that we should be person- 
ally grateful to him for all books. We have 
never given a thought to the man who first 
found out the use of fire; we do not know 
his name, and yet he it is who kindles the 
flames on our every hearth-stone. How much 
do we owe to the man who first invented 
speech? How much do we owe to the man who 
first found music? We have been ungrateful 
and we have even forgotten the names of our 
benefactors. It is easy enough to see what our 
fathers have given us — food, clothes, houses, 
and lands. It is not hard to realize what we 
have that we would not have if we had 
lived in our grandfather's time, — the tele- 
phone, the telegraph, the railroad. If we go 
back another generation, we find that men 
had no matches, no free schools, no libraries, 
[17] 



a poung pian'^ EeUgiott 

no machinery, no churches, no country. For 
only that long ago men were pioneers, and 
dwelt in cabins, and fought with the wild 
beasts, and wilder men. They lived in a begin- 
ning of the world. And yet the American 
pioneer is not a real starting point. He had 
a grandfather and an ancestral home across 
the sea. He had invention in his hand and 
science in his heart. He was a long way from 
the first man. 

Go back to the cradle of our Anglo-Saxon 
race. It is in the forests. This race ©f ours 
lived in huts and caves. Their raiment was 
the untanned skins of wild beasts, and their 
food was roots, and berries, and raw flesh, 
and reeking blood. They had not learned the 
use of fire in the preparation of food. It was 
a giant race, blue-eyed, golden-haired, cruel, 
and blood-thirsty. They were robbers on 
the land and pirates on the sea. Their sin 
was drunkenness. Their virtue was chastity. 
Their genius was freedom. And for religion, 
these stern men worshipped the stern Wodin 
in the forests at night, where amid the rays 
[18] 



of flickering torches they sacrificed their 
own children in the worship of the gods. 
This is your family and mine, as it lived 
only a little while ago. We were like that 
long after the first Christmas. We were like 
that long after Csesar built his Roman roads 
in Great Britain. We were like that when 
the wise men of Italy had already built cathe- 
drals, and written theologies, and composed 
masses, and painted pictures. We were like 
that more than five hundred years after 
Christ came and Paul preached. We were Kke 
that to the very twilight of the modern world. 
And why are we not like that to-day? What 
has happened? 

There is only one answer — " Our fathers 
have wrought." They have lived, and labored, 
and thought, and sought, and suffered, and 
died. Wisdom, it is true, did not die with 
them; but it is also true that Wisdom was 
not born with us. To deny or neglect their 
wisdom is to be a fool. Insane would be the 
man who would throw away all he has in- 
herited in the material world — every house, 
[19] 



a poung jHan'j8 EeUgton 

every clearing, every tool, every art, and go 
back to the wilderness and naked savagery. 
Who would burn every book, forget every 
science, ignore all knowledge, scoff at every 
faith, mock at every prayer? Not even a 
young man could be so silly. 
The father was right. He had a right to the 
attention, and obedience, and reverence of 
his son. Men before us have blazed out the 
great truths in agriculture, and commerce, 
and invention, and science, and philosophy, 
and religion. There they are, and there they 
will remain forever. And the roads they have 
built over the valleys, and the tunnels they 
have dug through the hills, are no more real 
and lasting than their great discoveries in 
thought and religion. They have given us 
all we have. They have a right to our re- 
spect and reverence forever. A man who 
would laugh at his father's faith, and see in 
all the creeds of the past only ignorance and 
absurdity, but exhibits his own narrow-mind- 
edness and lack of comprehension. 
" I know it is through ignorance that ye did 
[20] 



and i^ijs dfatj^er'js faitl^ 

it." Larger experience in life will give us 
more wisdom. You will find out, O young 
man, as you come into the realities of life, 
that there are many things both " in heaven 
and earth which have never been dreamed of 
in your philosophy." When you have fought 
as well as your fathers, you may become as 
wise as your fathers. It takes experience to 
make us wise. 

In the State House in Boston are a hundred 
old battle-flags. Some of them are silk, some 
wool, and some only cotton. None are woven 
without a flaw, and some have glaring imper- 
fections — not a stripe is straight, not a 
single star has a perfect angle. Not one of 
them have two-and-forty stars. Some of 
them have thirty-five; some have twenty, 
and some have only thirteen. There is not 
one that I would take to be my flag, 
to carry at the head of a regiment, or to be 
an emblem of my country. My country is 
larger, and grander, and greater than any- 
thing those flags know. But I love them, and 
I will teach my children to stand before them 
[21] 



with uncovered brow. I love them for the 
rents and stains that tell of sufferings borne, 
of the battles won, of courage, and patriot- 
ism, and heroism. No, they are not my flags ; 
but without them, and that for which they 
stand, my flag could never have been. The 
flag of forty stars is the child of the flag of 
thirteen stars. The old ideas of the past and 
the old definitions of the fathers, and the old 
creeds of the saints, may not represent our 
faith, and our hopes, and our fears, of to- 
day, but they are the creators of it. Without 
their faith our broader faith would never 
have been. Even as to-day is the child of a 
hundred yesterdays, the religion of the young 
man is the legacy of the old man's faith. 
It is only because of their partial knowledge 
that the young and the old stumble over one 
another. There have always been the old and 
the young, and they need one another. The 
Conservative and- the Radical supplement 
one another. If there were only young men, 
the race would forever rest in the ignorance 
of childhood. If there were only old men, 
[22] 



and i^(j8 mW^ ifaiti^ 

thought would petrify. Both minister to the 
kingdom of God. 

Forms change, but the spirit abides. Defini- 
tions change, but Christ is the " same to-day, 
yesterday, and forever." Creeds are modi- 
fied, but the verities never die — and now 
abideth Faith, Hope, Love — and they are 
more undimmed than ever. Sin still is, and 
still there is a Saviour " who saves His peo- 
ple from their sins." Men are not converted 
in the same dramatic way as their fathers, 
but they are converted. They do not go to 
church from the same motives as of old — duty 
and fear — but more young men are Chris- 
tian and engaged in Christian work than ever 
before. Men love Christ as of old, and never 
in all history did He have such authority. 
The statecraft of the world affirms that its 
highest principles are drawn from the man 
of Galilee. The kings of the earth and the 
rulers acknowledge Him as King of Kings 
and Lord of Lords ! 

The working-man has doubted the church; 

but he does not doubt Christ. The sermon on 

[23] 



31 ^oung jttan'js ISeltgton 

the mount is his inspiration and the brother- 
hood of man his dream. 

When has the intellect of the world found 
fault either with Christ's character or 
Christ's message? Take His word on immor- 
tality — is not it our highest word, and is not 
even science of our day building arguments 
to prove it from the world of time and mat- 
ter? Take Christ's idea of God — a loving, 
personal Father. That it is true and reason- 
able is not only the Christian's hope to-day, 
but the philosopher's affirmation. Whether it 
be certain or not, is it not a unanimous tes- 
timony of believer and sceptic that it is 
altogether the noblest notion of God the 
world has ever had? The intellectual grip of 
Jesus on this age is secure. Alike in politics 
and social questions and in religion do the 
masters, whether they call themselves Chris- 
tian or Agnostic, rest their teaching on the 
precepts of Jesus. The scholarship and the 
thought of the world looks upon Jesus cry- 
ing, " Master — unto whom shall we go : thou 
hast the words of Eternal Life ! " 
[24] 



The spirit of Christ is to-day in men's hearts 
as truly as ever. Is not the haystack at Will- 
iamstown, and the missionary's monument at 
Oberlin? Is not Damien the martyr of Molo- 
kai, and Stanley of Africa? Did not some 
of us see and know Paton who shed his 
blood for Christ's sake and lost men's sake? 
Where is there any speech that can tell 
the inside story of the Boxer Rebellion? The 
Anglo-Saxon missionaries were heroic as 
any who sleep in Westminster Abbey. But 
they were no whit more heroic than the Chi- 
nese men and women who were offered life 
upon recantation, but who never wavered, 
but like Stephen, crying " O Lord Jesus," 
gave up the ghost. 

The letter has changed, but the spirit re- 
mains. Our conception of it is new and en- 
larged, but it is the same old Bible. Our 
account of creation is fuller, but it is still the 
wonder and work of God. Our creeds may 
be new, but they still seek to define the ways 
of the same good and loving God. The old 
and the new differ some, but they are alike 
[25] 



a poung jman'js iReltgion 

more. Their differences are non-essentials. 
Their resemblances are fundamentals. After 
all the father is like the child. When morn- 
ing dawns they look out on the same world. 
At the noontime they bear the same bur- 
dens, face the same heat, and enter the same 
storms. They have the same faults ; they suf- 
fer the same pain; they are healed by the 
same physician. Alike they hope and fear, 
do and dare, and strive and thrive. They are 
baptized with the same sorrow; crowned with 
the same love, and comforted with the same 
divine hope. And when night comes, seventy 
and sixteen say the same prayer — 

^^Our Father, who art in heaven, 
Hallowed be Thy name; 
Thy Kingdom come; 

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven : 
Give us this day our daily bread; 
And forgive us our trespasses, 
As we forgive them that trespass against us: 
And lead us not into temptation. 
But deliver us from evil; 
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, 
and the glory forever, Amen.^' 
[26] 



These are the last words our fathers utter 
as they fall asleep: and they make music 
on the lips of every child. 



[27] 



wm i^ melffiton? 



[29] 



/ perceive that in all things ye are very religious, 

Paul to the Athenians. 

Man is incurably religious, 

Sabatier. 

Religion is morality touched by emotion. 

Matthew Arnold. 

The thing a man does practically believe; the thing a 
man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, 
concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, 
and his duty and destiny therein, 

Carlyle. 

A soul with no religion . . , 
Was without rudder, anchor, compass — might be 
Blown every way with every gust, and wreck 
On any rock. 

If man be only 
A willy-nilly current of sensations — 
Reaction needs must follow revel — yet — 
Why feel remorse, he, knowing that he must have 
Moved in the iron grooves of Destiny? 
Remorse then is a part of Destiny, 
Nature a liar, making us feel guilty 
Of her own faults. 

The last gleam of an after-life but leaves him 
A beast of prey in the dark, 

Tennyson. 



[30] 



CHAPTER SECOND 




O man remembers when he 
first heard of God. When 
we learn to talk, we already 
know how to pray. The 
church of our childhood is 
as familiar as " the little 
house where we were born.'' Over our youth 
the minister, as well as the teacher, stood 
guard; and when we met them in the street, 
to each alike, we took off our hat. The first 
day of every week was as much given up to 
religion as, once a year, the Fourth of July 
was given up to patriotism. Religion was as 
much a part of our surroundings as air, or 
sunshine, or the summer, or the family af- 
fection. 

Our world began to grow. Grandmother told 
us stories. The first one was about the birth of 
a baby when a star shone and the angels sang. 
Another one was about a babe whose mother 
[31] 



a Poung jEan'js meltfiton 

defied a great king and saved the baby's life 
by casting him adrift upon a great river in 
an ark, which she had made for him with her 
own hands. In every one of these stories there 
was hidden away a knowledge of God. 
Since then we have read many books. But 
among them all, there are no books like those 
in which the great stories of the race are 
writ. Men never grow too old for the story- 
teller. Herodotus is still young, and has the 
power to charm. Ulysses, with his wanderings, 
is still the hero of the growing boy. Americus 
may have been uncertain, and untruthful even, 
but because he first described it, men have 
named the new world after him. One reason 
why Paul has so large a place in the New 
Testament is because his life reads like a fairy 
tale, and because he was a traveller in many 
lands. We may have neglected his letters, and 
cared nothing for his words on fore-ordina- 
tion and sin ; but we have never grown weary 
of tracing his journey on the map, and listen- 
ing to him as he speaks of the strange cus- 
toms of many lands. His shipwreck, and the 
[32] 



^m ijs meligion? 



story of his coming to Rome, have never lost 
their power to inthrall. Higher yet flames our 
imagination when we see him go to Athens. 
We like to follow this old-time traveller 
through the " City of the Violet Crown.'' We 
know that he beheld the wharves and ware- 
houses and fleets of the merchantmen, whose 
white wings covered the Mediterranean Sea. 
All these witnesses of Athenian wealth and 
commerce Paul saw, because he came to Athens 
by the sea. We know he met their philosophers 
— ^both Epicurean and Stoic — and many was 
the hard bout he had with them in argument. 
He must have looked upon the Parthenon — 
it was the pride of the ancient world, as it is 
the wonder of the modern. I am sure he went 
out to find the Agora from whose stone steps 
Demosthenes had thundered. Without fail 
he marked the spot where Socrates had spent 
his last days and had ascended in his chariot 
of martyrdom, calmly talking of God and 
immortality. I think he stood to weep there. 
Athens cast a spell over Paul, and there is evi- 
dence of it in the broad horizons of his Mars 
[33] 



a poung jwian'js Religion 

Hill sermon. I wish he had had the time to 
write down for us all that he saw and all that 
he thought. But Paul had time to state only 
the most important thing, and that he set 
down at length. The most important thing 
Paul found in Athens was not its schools, nor 
its philosophies, nor its commerce, nor its art, 
but " I perceive that in all things ye are very 
religious." The main thing about the old 
Greek world was its religion. The temple was 
first in Athens, even as it was in Jerusalem. 
Religion is the deepest thing about any nation 
or people. Religion is everywhere ; and no- 
where do men rise higher than their religion. 
Read all the books of great travellers, ancient 
and modern, and in not one of them will you 
find an account of a people without religion. 
Their religion may be a poor, dumb thing; 
but crude and cruel as it is, it has its votaries. 
Over its altars, smoking and bloody, the sor- 
rows and mysteries of human life are sobbed 
out, and the litanies of the race are sung. 
Paul is right, " God hath made of one blood 
all the nations of men . . . that they 
[ 34 ] 



WW i^ Eeltgion? 



should seek the Lord, if haply they might 
feel after Him, and find Him, though He be 
not far from every one of us." The funda- 
mental fact, then, about every people is their 
religion. 

John Ruskin says that " In three books the 
story of any race is writ — the book of their 
Art; the book of their Words, and the book 
of their Deeds." 

Let us open the book of their Art. We can 
no more understand a people's art until we 
understand their religion, than we can read 
Homer without knowing Greek. It is their re- 
ligion that makes Egyptian temples so vast 
and so full of gloom. Their nature worship is 
what made the Greek temples low and earth- 
loving. It is their worship of a transcendent 
God, " whom the heaven of heavens cannot 
contain," that made the cathedral builders 
pile stone upon stone until the turrets of their 
Gothic temples seem to reach the very sky. 
All great art is symbolic of religion. Oriental 
rugs are prayers woven upon the loom. Their 
tapestries and their ceramic arts all bear the 
[35] 



autograph of religion. The painting of the 
world is a litany of the world. Religion is the 
theme of the world's art. 
Open the book of their words. 
In literature, as in man, only the spiritual is 
immortal. Books without religion do not live. 
Ancient literatures are ancient liturgies. 
Even the novelist gets his best hearing when 
he writes about the problems of the soul. 
What are the great philosophies.'^ Definitions 
men have attempted of God and His handi- 
work. What are the great histories.? They 
that tell of the rise and flower of the human 
soul. What are the great orations? Those on 
the sacred themes. What is poetry.? All great 
poets are first prophets, and their verse 
brings to us visions and harmonies of the spir- 
itual world. Of literature, religion is both 
spring and stream. As Emerson says: 

^' Out of the heart of Nature rolled 
The burden of the Bible old, 
The litanies of nations Carrie^ 
Like the volcanoes tongue of flame, 
Up from the burning core below — 
The Canticles of love and woe.^\ 
[36] 



^l^at ijS Beltsion? 



Religion is the inspiration of literature. 
What do you find written in the books of 
their deeds? Look at the great migrations of 
the world, and follow them back to their first 
cause. We read, " Abram went out from 
Haran not knowing whither he went " — why? 
For religion's sake. Moses led the Israel- 
ites away from the flesh-pots of Egypt 
■ — why? For religion's sake. The Hebrew 
people, long captives, left rich Babylon 
for Judean wastes to take up the hard- 
ship of the pioneer — why? For religion's 
sake. Providence allowed Alexander the Great 
to conquer the world, and in the wake of his 
phalanxes the Greek tongue followed every- 
where — why? For religion's sake. That Prov- 
idence, in His own good time, permitted Cassar 
to build up the greatest empire of history, 
and from his imperial capital to rule the 
world — why? For religion's sake. We are 
fond of telling of the Pilgrim, who " moored 
his bark on the wild New England shore," 
and we are just as proud to tell that he did it 
for religion's sake. Why did Thomas Hooker 
[37] 



and his band of English folk stay not with the 
colony of Massachusetts Bay, but instead 
journeyed through the forests one hundred 
miles to the untamed wilderness of the Con- 
necticut? For religion's sake. Ask the fathers 
why they forsook the New England hills and 
laws for the plains and lawlessness of Kansas 
when she was bleeding. It was for religion's 
sake. Why yesterday and to-day do the stu- 
dents of Yale, going out from the college 
walls, pass by comfortable settlements in 
home churches, and pause not in their march 
until they find themselves amid the wilds of 
the far West.? Why do they live and labor 
there in poverty and isolation, with their own 
naked hands laying the foundation stones 
of American commonwealths.'^ For religion's 
sake. 

We have been reading only from one page of 
the world's deeds, and religion is written all 
over it. In all the book " there is no speech 
nor language where its voice is not heard." 
Religion is the mainspring of the world's ac- 
tion. 

[S8] 



W\)at i0 Religion? 



We see that religion is not only a very uni- 
versal thing, but a very deep thing in human 
life. All our lives we have heard its words 
tinge and color the speech of the people 
about us. We have been accustomed to see 
its temples in every city and country- 
side. One day out of seven is set apart sa- 
credly for its services. Scholars are its min- 
isters. Multitudes are its votaries. The State 
respects and protects it with laws. We teach 
childhood its mysteries; and we invoke its 
sanctions upon all the solemn hours of life. 
When the babe is born, our word is, " We have 
gotten a man child from the Lord." When 
love claims its own at the marriage altar, we 
send for the man of God, and his word is, 
" Whom God hath joined together let no man 
put asunder." When death comes and lays its 
hand upon our first-born, until the hand is 
icy cold and the brow is as white as ashes, our 
breaking hearts sob, " The Lord hath given, 
and the Lord hath taken away." Religion 
overarches all our lives. 

What is this universal and deep thing which 
[39] 



men have named their rehgion? That is our 
question — What is rehgion? 
The first reply men make to the question is, 
Rehgion is worship; a matter of form and 
prayer. 

So the churches vast and minsters rise and 
are the pride and glory of the men who build 
them. The pride of every Jew still is Solo- 
mon's temple. India is full of temples greater 
than St. Peter's at Rome. The temple at 
Thebes — is it not one of the seven wonders of 
the world? Who has not heard of Constanti- 
nople's St. Sophia — first Christian and now 
for centuries a Mohammedan temple? Of the 
great cathedrals we have all read, and won- 
dered and marvelled. They are poems and 
prayers in stone; and every one is a Mecca 
for a world's pilgrimage. Men's greatest 
buildings have been their temples. Into those 
temples the multitudes have crowded with lit- 
any and ritual, and chant and prayer, and 
psalm and incense. There God hath come till 
the divine glory filled all the place and smote 
the hearts of the worshippers. Large is the 
[40] 



WW t0 meligion? 



worship of the world; but worship is not re- 
ligion. It is only the language of religion. 
From the mistaking of worship for religion 
has come the dividing of life up into parts 
called the sacred and secular, and it is a very 
harmful division. We have thought Sunday 
was a religious day, and have forgotten that 
all days were religious. We have thought that 
a priest was a divine man, and forgot, too, 
that all men were divine. We have thought 
that the prayer-meeting was a religious place, 
and have forgotten that all places are relig- 
ious places. No, religion is not the church, 
and it is not worship ; it lies back of and is 
greater than all churches and all worship. 
Then there is another reply, which is more 
common to us Protestants. Religion is a form 
of sound words. It is right thinking. It is to 
believe something. " Believe on the Lord Jesus 
Christ and thou shalt be saved." Men read 
that beautiful saying of Paul and say, " Yes, 
if you believe that Mary's child is the Son of 
God, you are a religious man. If you have 
some smaller definition of Christ, or none at 
[41] 



all, you are not a religious man." Religion is 
a dogma. It is a creed. So bigotry is brought 
forth, and not only the Pagan world, but a 
large slice of the Christian world is deemed 
irreligious. 

Orthodoxy is made the test of faith, and the 
unorthodox man is set down as an infidel. But 
the saints of to-day were all heretics yester- 
day. Busy are we to-day building the monu- 
ments of those whom our fathers stoned. 
John Milton was not orthodox, but is he not 
the grandest poet of Puritan faith .^ Has our 
age had any prophet of more inspiration than 
James Martineau? Who in our time has sung 
such hymns as Whittier.? Where is there a 
statesman with more Christian vision than 
Senator Hoar? These men are net orthodox, 
but are they irreligious ? Have not their voices 
sounded for the freedom of the race ? Have 
not their songs thrilled and stilled the hopes 
and fears of men.^ Have they not lifted the 
hearts of multitudes into touch with the In- 
finite Father.^ If they are not religious, what 
is religion? 

[42] 



W^at ijs Beliaton? 



A creed is not a religion — it is only some 
man's description of religion. Religion has its 
churches and rituals — they are its schools. It 
has its great historic creeds — they are the 
registers of Christian experience. They tell 
of victories won and measure the heights and 
depths of faith. They are the psalms of the 
Saints. Then let us not confound them with 
religion itself, lest they become stumbling- 
blocks and burdens too heavy for men to bear. 
Rather let us think of them as the rich tapes- 
tries of our faith, which, like trophies, we 
would hang upon our altars. Religion makes 
creeds ; creeds do not make religion. Back of 
all churches, and all worship, and all faiths, 
and all creeds, and in them all, there is relig- 
ion itself — the life and soul of them all. 
A third reply, and I think it is truer than the 
others, is. Religion is an experience. In some 
circles common parlance puts it, " He has 
got religion " ; " he has lost his religion. '^ 
This is a saying apt to be on the lips of the 
uncritical in the time of great revivals. By 
this is meant that the man has been converted. 
[43] 



a ^oung jman'js Eeligton 

He has joined the church. He has the witness 
of the spirit. The truth of this reply lies in 
its recognition that religion is something 
vital — a thing of life in the man himself. Its 
error is inadequacy. It takes the part for the 
whole. Feeling is not religion. Afflatus is not 
religion. Ecstasy is not religion. Emotion is 
not religion — though religion begets and 
colors feeling and emotion. A high state of 
exaltation is no more religion than a state of 
depression is atheism. The prophet had his 
hours under the juniper tree. Even Jesus 
could not remain permanently on the Mount 
of Transfiguration. The flower is not the 
plant. The poem is not the human intellect. A 
lyric is not all of love. Worship is not relig- 
ion — it is its language. Creeds are not relig- 
ion — they are its definitions. Experience is 
not religion — it is its flower. We demand a 
larger word. We must have an inclusive ac- 
count. 

Our age loves to study everything in the 

light of its origin. Let us turn our inquiry to 

that method. Whence came the religion of 

[ 44 ] 



3^]^at 10 Religion? 



man? What is its origin? Here also we come 
upon surface answers and misleading state- 
ments. Here the cynical historian is apt to 
appear whose penchant is for destruction. He 
takes seriously the French epigram " History 
is a set of fables mankind has agreed to be- 
lieve in," and begins to scout and scuttle the 
most cherished beliefs of mankind. He assures 
us Moses is a myth. Job is only a name. 
Homer never lived and never sung. Our Bible 
is a book of fables ; the lives of the Saints are 
but a tissue of lies. Then he becomes auda- 
cious, and repeats the saying of the old scof- 
fer of Rome's degenerate days, that relig- 
ion was a useful device to keep the populace 
in subjection. From this saying of a poli- 
tician, our critic reaches the rather large con- 
clusion that " all religion is mere device, an 
invention of the priests, with which they may 
hoodwink the people." 

Such statements are their own refutation. Re- 
ligion made the priest, and not the priest re- 
ligion. Carlyle was never more the inspired 
prophet than when he said, in speaking of 
[45] 



this very thing : " The religions of men all 
have a truth in them or men would never have 
taken them up. Quackery and dupery do 
abound; in religions, above all in the oldest 
and decaying religions, they have fearfully 
abounded ; but quackery was never the origi- 
nating influence in such things ; it was not the 
health and life of such things, but their dis- 
ease, the sure precursor of their being about 
to die. Let us not forget this — it is a sorry 
hypothesis — that of quackery giving birth to 
any faith, even of savage men. Quackery 
gives birth to nothing; it gives death to all 
things. Man everywhere is the born enemy of 
lies." 

Sometimes we are told, as Herbert Spencer 
has preached, that the invisible world first 
got afloat through dreams and shadows and 
trances ; and religion at flrst was a belief in 
ghosts, and then became a sort of myth or al- 
legory. But it is a most earnest thing to be 
alive in the world, and to die has never been 
fun for any man. And men never did hang 
their lives to idle tales, and never did risk 
[46] 



Wm i^ Beligion? 



their lives for myths and allegories. However 
crude some of those old ideas may seem to us, 
though they be as crude as the old Scandina- 
vian sagas, or as superstitious as Dante's 
epic, still for the honest, sternly lived men of 
those far-off days, these expressed their hon- 
est realities. It was their way, imperfect as it 
may now seem to their children, of expressing 
what was the true theorem of the universe, as 
they saw it from their low ground and small 
horizons. ^ 

But we are told, " Religion has been supersti- 
tious, and superstition is passing away, and 
maybe religion will pass away with it." The 
flintlock musket has passed away, but has the 
need of firearms passed away with it.'^ No, it 
has invented the needle-gun and repeating- 
rifle. The old law of personal vengeance has 
passed away, but not the necessity of pun- 
ishment for crime. That survives and has 
given us code, court, and jury. The old al- 
chemy has passed away, but are oxygen and 
hydrogen no more in the air, and the elements 
no more in the ground? Nay, out of the old 
[47] 



alchemy there has come modern chemistry. 
The old soothsayer of former days has passed 
away : we no more hear the incantation of the 
witch ; but has disease passed away with need 
for its healing? Nay, is it not true that out 
of the old ignorance and out of the old mis- 
takes m.en have found out better than ever be- 
fore how to heal and care for the human 
body? The law is everywhere present — 
" First the ear, then the blade, and then the 
full corn in the ear." The perfect comes by 
way of the imperfect; the complete by way 
of the incomplete; and the truth by way of 
the half truth. 

No man is born six feet tall. He comes into the 
world by the way of the cradle, and the nur- 
sery, and the playground, and that earliest 
time is a time of ignorance and silly toys. But, 
after all, the very toys make for wisdom and 
enrich all his after life. And so if you tell me 
that religion has come into the world from 
nature worship and ghost worship, and a 
thousand superstitions have clung to it, I am 
not disturbed. I only know then that religion 
[48] 



WW tjs Beltgton? 



has come into the world as everything has 
come, by the way of the unfinished and imper- 
fect, and it has always been going on from 
more to more. Its growth proves its vitality ; 
its improvement is certificate of its survival. 
Let us look closely for the origin of religion. 
We find the source of religion in man himself ; 
it is potential within him; an implication of 
his nature. 

I know that men who write infallible things 
in magazine articles, for five dollars a page, 
have been telling us that man is only a mech- 
anism, and that " the brain secretes thought 
as the liver secretes bile," and that man is 
simply a superior and fine sort of animal. 
But man is more than a mechanical toy. The 
physical man is the house: the man is more 
than the house. Man can never convince man- 
kind otherwise. 

I know the materalist has offered proof .^ He 
has dissected my body, and this is his report. 
It was in all the scientific records a dozen 
years ago — " I find brains, but no love ; I find 
^ Lyman Abbott's '* Signs of Promise." 
[49] 



a poung jHan'0 Eeligion 

bone and muscle, but no soul." " I can see 
bone, and blood, and bile, and heart, and 
lungs. I can see every organ, but I cannot see 
mind. I cannot see any emotion. I cannot see 
any soul. It simply isn't there." Am I con- 
vinced .^^ Not at all. 

There are two men that one scarcely knows 
what to do with : One of them is the man who 
denies the reality of the knowledge that 
comes through his physical senses. He will not 
believe anything which he can see. 
The other one is the man who denies the real- 
ity of everything which his senses do not re- 
port ; who will not believe anything which he 
cannot see. 

The first man says that all knowledge which 
we derive through our five senses is a delusion. 
He steps on a tack, or gets bitten by a bull- 
dog, and when we sympathize with him he 
promptly says, " There was no tack ; there was 
no bull-dog. I was simply doing a bit of sharp 
thinking, or have been the victim of a pug- 
nacious idea." You cannot argue with the man 
who denies the realities of what his senses re- 
[50] 



WW i^ meliijton? 



port. You cannot prove to a blind man that 
the rose is red. 

Then there is the other man, who says that 
all knowledge is derived through the physical 
senses. He refuses to believe in anything he 
cannot see, or hear, or touch, or taste, or 
smell. He will not believe in hope, because no- 
body ever saw it. He sets love down for a tin- 
gling of the nerves, because nobody has ever 
weighed it. He denies the reality of the soul, 
because you cannot gather it up in an urn. 
He disbelieves in God, because no man has 
been able to see God with the naked eye. 
You and I say that he is like the other man, 
and it is hard to do anything with him, be- 
cause you cannot prove to a blind man that 
there is such a thing as light. 
The fact is that the soul has its avenues of 
knowledge and the body has its organs of 
knowledge. 

There are some things which we know as 
really as we know physical things, which 
" eye hath not seen, and ear hath not heard." 
We know love; we know hope; we know the 
[51] 



a ^oung jEan'^ Eeltgion 

categories of human thought; we know God 
and immortahty. Muscle and bone and nerve 
are realities, but so are love and hope and 
faith realities. I believe this is an honest 
world, and I believe what my physical senses 
tell me. And because I believe this world is 
true, I also believe what my spiritual senses 
tell me. That is what Lord Tennyson, who 
went to the bottom of nineteenth century ma- 
terialism, means when he sings of — 

'^ That heat of inward evidence y 
By which he doubts against the sense, '[ 

That is what Robert Browning, the poet of 
the soul, has in mind when he says : 

^' / know that He is there ^ as I am here. 
By the same "proof, which seems no proof at all, 
It so exceeds familiar forms of proof. '\ 

The soul has visions, and language, and appe- 
tites, and craves the Infinite, and claims the 
spiritual. It demands God and worship as the 
body demands bread and exercise. It is hun- 
gry for the Divine as the mind is hungry for 
[52] 



WW t0 meltgton? 



knowledge. Religion is as much a necessity to 
my nature as knowledge or food. " My heart 
cries out for God, the living God," and with- 
out God the human soul will die. " Forests lie 
cradled in an acorn cup." Libraries all exist 
in the babe's intellect. Religion lies wrapped 
ready to grow in every human soul. 
Another source of religion is in the universe. 
The man who cannot find spirit within me 
with his microscope, and because he cannot 
find it says " Man is a soulless clod," hunts 
through the universe for God. He comes back 
and says, " I have travelled in every land, I 
have climbed every mountain; with my tele- 
scope I have swept every horizon; with my 
microscope I have explored every tiniest cran- 
ny, and I can find stars, and suns, and trees, 
and lands, and worlds, and seas, but I cannot 
find God." " The heavens are empty ; the 
great Companion is dead." I do not believe his 
last saying any more than his first. 
Who made the world .^^ Nobody; it happened. 
When you say that, the very children will 
laugh at you. Everybody knows that from 
[53] 



nothing comes nothing, and everything must 
have an adequate cause. 

Who created the world? If you follow the 
materialism of our fathers, you answer, 
" Chance." If you want to be up-to-date and 
scientific, you answer, " A fortuitous concat- 
enation of atoms." Now I laugh at you. 
I went to see Kellar.-^ He took an empty cup 
and held it in his hand, and then he began to 
wave a wand over it, and out of the cup came 
birds, rabbits, roses, and at last a tree which 
was filled with fruit. " Oh," you say, " that 
is sleight-of-hand." But Kellar is a tyro as 
compared with the original atom, if this ac- 
count be true. For these men tell us that 
from this atom, in which there is no mind and 
no will, there have come not only stars, and 
suns, and worlds, but there have come also 
man, and music, and literature, and love, and 
heroism, and faith. Sir Hoary Atom is the 
author of Hamlet and the Messiah. He built 
St. Peter's and the Brooklyn Bridge. He 
planned Waterloo, and invented the steam- 

^ HiUis's '*Th^ Infjuence of Christ in Modern Life/' 



WW ijs ISeligion? 



ship. He is the father of Washington, and 
from his loins descended Isaiah with the splen- 
dors of his eloquence, and Jesus with His cross. 
To utter that claim is to answer it. When 
did dead matter ever create anything? As a 
boy George Washington knew that chance 
never wrote a name in a garden bed. Man 
knows there would have been no house unless 
first there had been a man. Man knows that 
chance and atoms do not account for the 
world, but, as Herbert Spencer says, " We 
are in the midst of an Infinite and Eternal 
Energy whence all things proceed." 
Once again our materialist rej oins : ^ An ar- 
gument for a First Cause cannot lead us to an 
Absolute Being. We ask. Who caused this 
First Cause.? Who made God.? 
And yet that is a kitten playing with its tail. 
In any philosophy of existence we must as- 
sume a final world-ground. The materialist's 
" force " or " energy " is assumed to be final. 
We must think of this world-ground as either 
matter or spirit. The one man calls the First 

^Jones's " Social Laws in the Spiritual World." 
[55] 



Cause " force," the other calls the First Cause 
" spirit.'* As a matter of experience, we 
know spirit as a cause, and we do not know 
matter as a cause. It is easier to think of the 
world-ground as spirit. Anything else is un- 
thinkable. 

John Fiske,^ Herbert Spencer's disciple, 
knows that this Eternal Energy must be 
thought of as a personal being ; that the mind 
cannot stop short of it; that all experience 
certifies that spirit is creative, not matter: 
and so he reminds us of a saying which 
Goethe has put into the lips of Faust, when 
he walks with Marguerite in the garden, and 
she asks him if he believes in God. His reply 
is, " So long as the tranquil dome of heaven 
is raised above our heads, and the bloomed 
set earth is spread forth beneath our feet; 
while the everlasting stars course in their 
mighty orbits and the lover gazes with de- 
light into the eyes of her who loves him, so 
long must our hearts go out to Him who 
made the heavens and the earth." Aye, there 
1 Fiske's " The Idea of God." 
[56] 



WW ijs ISeltgton? 



is a soul in the universe. All men believe in 
Him. Only the fool hath said, " There is no 
God." 

In our search for the origin of religion we at 
last have come upon two personalities : One of 
them is I, Ego, soul, " Lord and Master in 
this our present house of clay." The other, 
Lord, Maker, and Master of the universe, 
who " stands within the shadow, keeping 
watch above His own," and is God. " Man is 
a hving soul," " God is a spirit." Intelligent 
Will alone is creative. Personality is the be- 
ginning of all things. 

Whenever you come to personal beings, you 
come upon what is called relationship. They 
can understand and talk to one another ; they 
can love and hate; they can make friendship 
or declare war; they can live together or 
apart; they may be kinsfolk. Out of this re- 
lationship between personal beings comes the 
highest, noblest things we know. 
Here is the relationship between friend and 
friend. Out of it springs that affection of 
David for Jonathan, whose story never grows 
[57] 



old nor fails to melt the heart. Out of this re- 
lationship goes up the heart sobs called the 
great elegies. They are griefs set to music. 
Here is Milton's " Lycidas," with its organ- 
like music. Here is Shelley's " Adonais," as 
gentle as an angel's tears. Here is Tennyson's 
" In Memoriam," where grief sits by the 
grave of a friend through long years. 
Here is the relationship of teacher and 
scholar. Under this gentle yoke Socrates and 
Plato walk together down the halls of fame. 
Jesus and John loved one another, and grew 
strangely alike, and filled all the dark corners 
of the world with the splendors of love. 
Here is the relationship of husband and wife 
— on this foundation is the world built. 
" Greater love hath no man than this, that he 
lay down his life for his friend." That is the 
test of love the Master Himself gave, and 
yet that is the heroism that is being wrought 
out by every fireside. 

Here is the relationship between parent and 

child. There is no love like a mother's, and 

there is no heroism like a father's. In a book 

[58] 



WW i$ meliQion? 



of the present year I read of a man who 
writes the tragedy of his hfe in words like 
this, " Unto you a child is born — that is 
what the telegram said.^ Then the fear of 
fatherhood mingled wildly with the joy of 
creation. Soon I learned to love the wee thing 
as it grew and waxed strong, and as the little 
soul unfolded itself in the twitter and cry 
of the half -formed words, and its eye grew 
bright and caught the glimmering flash of 
life. How beautiful he was. So sturdy and 
masterful he grew; so filled with bubbling 
life. We were not far from worshipping this 
revelation of the Divine." There are some 
here who have passed through that glorious 
noontime of love's splendid day. But the man 
goes on : "I heard a voice calling me at 
midnight, and it was crying, ' The shadow of 
death ! The shadow of death ! ' The hours 
trembled on; the night listened; the ghastly 
dawn glided hke a tired thing across the 
lamplight. And then we two looked upon the 
child as he turned away his eyes and stretched 
1 Professor Du Bois's " The Souls of Black Folk." 
[59] 



his tired hands and passed out into the shadow 
of death. And in that sick chamber writhed 
the world's most piteous thing — a childless 
mother." Some of you have stood in that death 
chamber, and some of you walked hence- 
forth through life, and for beauty there was 
only ashes ; and the sun had ceased to shine. 
And for you the days were only a burden, 
and you met them with a broken heart. The 
love of parent and child is a cup of joy. 
Alas ! when death rudely breaks the cup ! 
The neighbors had met together about the 
dust of a very old woman in a New England 
hamlet. Some spoke in whispers, commiserat- 
ing the dead woman's hard life. She had been 
born in this very house; she was married in 
this house ; she lived all her life in this house. 
She had never seen a railroad train. She had 
never had a silk dress. She had never been 
to Boston. The conclusion was that Aunt 
Polly's life of threescore years and twenty 
and ten was a failure. A day later her son, a 
Senator of the United States, spoke gently 
of his mother to his friends. He said : " The 
[60] 



W^at tji Religion? 



farm was stingy, the climate was harsh, the 
family was large, father was close. Eleven 
of us children went through college, and 
mother did it all. She began her work in the 
morning a great while before day, and she 
continued her work into the night, long after 
the family slept. It was toiling and contriv- 
ing, and making, and mending, and saving. 
Sometimes it was watching, and nursing, and 
fearing, and praying, and pleading. Mother 
did it all." Then he went on to tell of how 
one brother was a Governor, another a Judge, 
another a banker, and how each had turned 
out well, and was playing a man's part, or a 
woman's part, in the great world, and he 
always ended by saying, " Mother did it all." 
Who yet has sounded the depths of a mother's 
heart .'^ Who yet has searched the heights and 
depths of a father's care.? Who of us can 
put into words the heroism of life that has 
bubbled up like a spring out of this deep 
relationship of parent and child.? "Relation- 
ship is a great ring of fire which the great 
God hath put around the human race — its 
[61] 



emblem of divinity." Blood is thicker than 
water; relationship is the strongest thing in 
the universe. 

Now, then, I am ready to tell you what re- 
ligion is — Religion is the relationship^ and 
the life that grows out of the relationship, 
between a personal being called God and a 
personal being called man. It is the family 
life of the soul. Religion is relationship ! 
Relationship is something vital which can- 
not be put on or off, and belongs to every 
man's life. Every man, then, must have some 
religion. 

This grows on us as we go on to think a 
little. By his body man is related to the 
physical universe. He has intercourse with 
it. He can mould and shape it. Without its 
ministry he would die. He must have food, 
and raiment, and sunshine, and air, and 
water. He digs, and builds, and weaves, and 
plants; he cannot help it. It is his appetite 
and his necessity. It may be weak, it may be 
strong, it may be little, or it may be large, 
but every man has some physical life. 
[62] 



wm 10 Eeltaion? 



Life is more than food or raiment. Man is 
mentality. By his intellect he is related to the 
reason in the universe. This is why he is born 
asking questions — whence? That is why he 
dies asking questions — whither? Man is a live 
interrogation point, and he cannot help it. 
It is both hunger and satisfaction. All books 
and all knowledge are the output and outcry 
of this mental relationship. It may be flick- 
ering, almost ready to go out, or it may be 
blazing, like the noonday sun, but whether 
it be rich, or whether it be poor, every man 
has some intellectual life. 
Mind is only the second story of man. He 
is a three-storied being. The " upper room " 
is where the spirit dwells. He cannot escape 
the spiritualities; he was made that way and 
has relationship with the great Oversoul. He 
can no more do without religion than he 
can do without breathing. It is the condition 
of his very existence. Every man, then — the 
ignorant man, the pagan man, the cultivated 
man, the man of reverence, and the man of 
indifference — has some rehgious life. Relig- 
[63] 



a goung jttan'^ Eeligfon 

ion is more than ceremony or creed or cult — 
it is the life of the soul, and its relation to 
the soul of the universe. Every man has some 
religion, even as he has some bodily form 
and features, and some mental existence. A 
man without physical life would be a ghost. 
A man without intellectual life would be an 
idiot, A man without spiritual life would be 
a beast. 

Religion is man's spiritual relationship to 
the universe, and every one of you has some 
religion. It is a relationship — you cannot 
escape it. You can forget it, you can deny 
it, but you cannot put it off or away. It 
is a vital thing. It throbs in the blood and 
moulds and shapes and leads you in spite of 
yourself. This is a thing I want to impress 
upon you, that every one of you, whatever 
your creed, whatever your condition, what- 
ever your learning or ignorance, every one 
of you has some religion. It is as much a 
part of you as your walking or your talking 
or your breathing. You are related to God. 
Another thing comes out of this. Relation- 
[64] 



WW i^ ISeligion? 



ship is a very great word; indeed, it is an 
opening door. It always leads to something. 
To enter into new relationship is to possess a 
new world. 

The babe is bom, as we say, " trailing clouds 
of glory from heaven, our home." But into 
what does he come.? Into a human relation- 
ship. Arms are stretched for his embrace. 
Lips are set for his kissing. A home is built 
for his habitation. Parents, and kinsfolk, and 
friends and enemies, all become part of his 
life. This human relationship has opened up 
for the babe a new world. 
At last he outgrows his mother's arms, and 
his father's dooryard, and the little man 
turns his face to the school. Teachers, play- 
mates, all the joys and sorrows of school 
days come upon him now like a flood. His 
new relationship has brought him into a new 
world. 

He outgrows the school-time. His mother 
cries because he is six feet tall. His father 
blesses him because he is one-and-twenty 
years old. And the State comes now and holds 
[65] 



a Poung jEan'jS meligion 

out her hand and bids him enter into her 
service, and her Kfe, and her duties, and his 
new relationship of citizenship introduces 
him into a new world. 

Then, one day as he rejoices in the wider 
horizon of his new life, love meets him by 
the way. Yesterday the young man counted 
his liberty and freedom from responsibility 
to be the jewel and ornament of life. To-day, 
with gladness in his heart, he binds himself 
to new responsibilities for himself and other 
lives, and redoubles his toil that he may build 
his own fireside; and now wife and child sit 
by his hearthstone. Sorrow writes for him 
elegies; and joy bubbles like a spring and 
sings like a lark. A new and holy world is 
his because he has entered into a new rela- 
tionship. The man is growing, his horizons 
are widening. He is leaving the brute for the 
Divine. 

Some day a great scholar meets him by the 
way and offers him the keys of knowledge. 
He opens up to him the books of wisdom. 
He introduces him into the charmed and sa- 
[66] 



Wl)at i^ Beltfiton? 



cred circle of the world's seers. After long 
years he loses himself in the wilderness, or 
all alone he climbs the top of the highest 
mountains. He rakes the fires from the sun- 
set. He fingers the stars and weighs the worlds 
in his hand. Sometimes he is caught up as 
in a cloud of vision, and is carried away in 
the spirit until he beholds glories upon glories 
of the unseen, and catches the full harmonies 
of celestial music. He lives in a new atmos- 
phere. He has become a scholar and a poet. 
A new relationship has opened a new world. 
He may be about his fishing, like Peter; or 
about his money-getting, like Judas ; or about 
his day-dreams of the Messiah, like Nathan- 
iel. A new day dawns. One with a face of 
love, like an angel; or of wisdom, like the 
Master; or of sorrow, like the Saviour, meets 
him in life midway, and with beckoning hand 
says, " Follow me and I will show you the 
path that leads to the divine heights." He 
leaves off whatever he is doing and follows 
the Master. Sometimes he is led upon the 
Mount of Transfiguration, when the heavens 
[67] 



are opened and mysteries are only windows. 
Sometimes he has been led into the valley of 
Gethsemane — his cry is for the Eternal and 
his comforter is the Everlasting God. The 
Bible becomes dear to him because it is the 
literature of the soul. The saints become dear 
to him now because they have won victories 
for the soul. Poverty and wealth, hardship 
and joy, trial and victory are alike dear to 
him now because they have all the touch of the 
Eternal. His feet are upon the ground, but 
his head is in the heavens. His body is upon 
the earth, but his soul keeps company with 
the Divine. He has walked through the open 
doorway called religion, and he has become 
the citizen of a new and divine world. 
Religion is relationship with the Infinite — 
who can describe it.? New vistas are opening. 
We cannot see to the end. The distances stag- 
ger the heart. We can only dream of this 
new and divine relationship of men. If I am 
related to the African blood, it makes my 
hair kinky. If I am related to the Saxon 
blood, it gives me the golden poll and the 
[68] 



WW i^ aseUgfon? 



deep blue eye. If I am related to the sons of 
Italy, it gives me the olive skin, and the eye 
of midnight, and blood shot through with 
fire and poetry. If I am related to God — if 
His blood is in my veins — ^what will this 
relationship do for me? I do not know. The 
Apostle did not know. He could only say, 
" Now, beloved, we are the sons of God, 
and it doth not yet appear what we shall 
be." 

Are you making much about this divine re- 
lationship? Are you entering into this great 
new world? Do you know the Bible and are 
you deeply read in its literature? Do you 
know the church and are you being trained 
in it? It is the school of the spirit. It is for 
the development of the religious life that this 
earthly life is planned. Life trains the body, 
but the body dies like last summer's leaves. 
Life trains the mind, but knowledge too shall 
pass away, even as the heavens shall roll up 
as a scroll. " The soul is immortal and will 
journey across the years and beyond them." 
What is your soul? Is it an ignorant bar- 
[69] 



a ^oung jman'jj Eeligton 

barian, or is it a cultivated son of God? L 
it a hovel, or is it a temple? 

" Build thee more stately mansions, my soul 
As the swift seasons roll! 
Leave thy low-vaulted past! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last. 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast 

Till thou at length art free. 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's un- 
resting sea ! '' 



[70] 



wm i^ €}^tmianitvt 



[71] 



What is Christianity^ 

It is to believe that at the heart of things there is a 
Power with a mind and a will, from whom everything 
has comey and by whom everything is sustained: who 
is immanent in the universe, and specially inhabits the 
human soul; who is directing everything to moral ends, 
and whose character can be summed up in love. That 
Jesus Christ came from God, and is in a sense peculiar 
to Him, the Son of God ; that He has declared the char- 
acter of God to the human race, has broken the power of 
sin, and is the point of union between God and man. 

It is to fight the lower self at the base of our nature, 
to give the supreme place to the soul, to carry the cross 
of Christ in daily life and to keep His commandments of 
love, to forget one^s self and to think of others, to serve 
instead of ruling, to give instead of taking, to suffer in- 
stead of resisting. 

It is to hope that in the long battle between right and 
wrong, right will conquer, that the things apparently evil 
are making for good, that the agony of suffering will end 
in the blessing of holiness, that God is working every- 
thing up into something better in this world and that 
which is to come, and that humanity will one day be 
raised to the perfection of Christ, 

Faith, Hope, and Charity : without the faith there can 
neither be the charity nor the hope; without the charity 
the faith is not living ; without the hope the charity is not 
crowned. The charity proves the faith and creates the 
hope — the greatest of these is charity. He who loves is 
therefore most surely a Christian, 

Dr. John Watson (Ian Maclaren). 

[72] 



CHAPTER THIRD 




T is hardly more than ten 
years ago since there met 
in a Western city the first 
World's Parliament of 
Religions. Thither came 
princes from India; schol- 
ars from China ; priests from Russia ; bishops 
from Africa ; and prophets from every Euro- 
pean and American country. In that as- 
sembly the scholars were met from the ends 
of the earth; there was gathered the very 
flower of the world's faith. Their many- 
colored garb reminded one of the streets of 
Cairo. Their multifold speech made one think 
of Babel. Every man not only, as at Pente- 
cost, " heard them speaking in his own lan- 
guage," but also in the religious faith in 
which he was born. Every great religion had 
sent its prophet, and from his lips we heard 
his religion proclaimed and reasons given for 
[73] 



the faith that was in him. It was the most 
notable gathering in modem history. 
The influence of that gathering was cumu- 
lative. As the days went on, the crowds grew, 
the interest deepened, until a subduing rever- 
ence, like a cloud, hung over the place. We 
were thrilled, as we heard dusky priests, from 
the far-away Orient, tell us how God had 
spoken to His brown- faced children, and led 
them through their long and wonderful his- 
tory. It seemed so good to know for a fact 
that God had left no nation without a wit- 
ness of Himself. It made one's own religion 
seem all the nobler to realize that his revela- 
tion was only one — clearest, and most divine, 
if you please — but only one of God's mes- 
sages to man. We discovered that the souls 
of men, whatever their faith or language, 
have a common speech. Wherever and when- 
ever we speak of the God who " created the 
heavens and the earth," and " in whom we 
live and move and have our being," all men 
understand. I think the most impressive 
thing of all was the way they were received 
[74] 



when the great Christian teachers set forth 
the gospel of the Crucified. There was no 
scoffing, as at Athens, when Paul spoke. No 
one cried out " Babbler ! " It was beautiful, 
and it was impressive to see the courtesy, and 
the reverence, and the manifest respect with 
which men of every faith listened to the in- 
terpreters of Christianity. Those who stood 
by could but remember the charming picture 
of the Evangelist, showing us the Magi com- 
ing out of the heathen twilight with rich 
gifts to lay at the feet of the Son of Mary. 
One could only think of the time " when 
every knee shall bow and every tongue con- 
fess that Christ is Lord to the glory of the 
Father.'' 

Christianity, then. Is one of the religions of 
the world. We believe it to be the truest, and 
that it will be the universal religion of the 
world. But it is a religion of the world. 
That is something to hold fast to in this day. 
So many men there are who conceive of it 
as a form or ceremony. So many think of it 
as a philosophy to be defined and defended. 
[75] 



a pung jHan'iS aseltgton 

Still others, like Renan, poetize and praise it 
as a beautiful and pious dream. A growing 
number have stripped it of everything saper- 
natural, and proclaimed it as a splendid 
scheme of morality — " morality touched by 
emotion." There are prophets, everywhere 
among the plain people, who are preaching 
Christianity as a programme for economic 
life. "The multitudes," they tell us, "no 
longer go to church. They have deserted the 
preacher. They have no interest in the other 
world and in the spiritual life. The present 
problem of bread and butter is all there is to 
existence. The earth has no sky ; man has no 
spiritual interest. Jesus was a labor leader. 
Paul was the first walking delegate. The first 
Christians were communists. Christianity is 
a sociology." 

Now we will never get on in understanding 
Christianity unless, at the very start, we see 
that it is not a ceremony to be performed, 
nor a creed to be said, nor mere moralities to 
be observ^ed, nor an economic scheme for the 
poor, who desire their rich brothers to divide 
[76] 



their inheritance with them. Christianity may 
have in it all these things. It does touch life 
at all these points; but Christianity is not a 
programme. It is not a panacea. Christianity 
is a religion. And religion we have already 
defined as relationship. Religion is a relation- 
ship between a personal being, called God, 
and a personal being, called man, and their 
life growing out of this relationship. Chris- 
tianity is a religion. 

Moreover, Christianity is the religion taught, 
and lived, and incarnated by Jesus Christ. 
Paul was the first great Apostle of Chris- 
tianity ; but everything that Paul taught was 
not Christianity. The wheat was with the 
chaff; the brass was mixed with clay. Paul's 
teaching about the origin of physical death 
and his definition of Christ's death have been 
overworked. The fact of sin, the fact of the 
Divine sacrifice — these are parts of Chris- 
tianity. But Paul's explanation is not Chris- 
tianity. Christianity, as Jesus taught it, had 
nothing to say about the origin of sin, and 
had no theory of the atonement. I will be 
[77] 



instructed by Paul, but I will not be gov- 
erned by him. 

John Calvin was law-giver at a new birth 
hour of the Christian church. Without his 
divine gift of definition, the Reformation 
had perished. His is a name to conjure with 
in Christian history. John Calvin proclaimed 
Christianity; but all John Calvin said is not 
Christianity. He followed Christ, but he fol- 
lowed Him in the footsteps of Augustine, 
and interwove some of his human master's 
fatalism with his Divine Master's message. 
Election may be true or not, but it is not 
Christianity according to Christ. 
John Wesley came at a very critical and des- 
perate hour for the world. The eighteenth 
century was England's " conscienceless time." 
As the historian says, " There was no bright- 
ness in the past and no promise in the future ; 
religiously it looked not like the morning, 
but like the evening of the world." A French- 
man said, " There is no religion in England ; 
not more than four or five members of 
the House of Commons attend church. The 
[78] 



churches and cathedrals are empty." The 
Dean of St. Patrick's, in Dublin, preached 
one Sunday to only the sexton, and the sub- 
ject of his sermon was, " Be a good man, 
John, and be a Tory." In that day a wag 
defined religion after this manner : " Relig- 
ion, if you seek it, you won't find it; if you 
find it, you won't know it; if you know it, 
you haven't got it; if you have it, you can- 
not lose it; if you lose it, you never had it." 
It was in this dull, dead time that John 
Wesley came preaching a living gospel. He 
gathered the working classes of England, 
who were organizing revolution, and preached 
unto them the wonderful love of God until 
their hearts melted, tears of penitence rolled 
down their cheeks, and they cried out, 
"What shall I do to be saved?" He made 
them see that Christ could save all men from 
their sins, and that when Christ saved a man 
from his sins, he would know it. That was the 
movement, Green tells us, which saved Eng- 
land from worse than a French revolution. 
Dr. Herrick pronounces John Wesley " the 
[79] 



finest illustration of consecrated, unselfish, 
whole-hearted devotion that the church of 
Christ has ever offered to the vision of man, 
perhaps of angels." 

John Wesley preached Christianity, but 
everything that John Wesley said was not 
Christianity. We believe in the new birth, but 
we do not believe that every man remembers 
his own birthday. We believe in the witness 
of the Spirit, but we do not believe that the 
Spirit of God always speaks with tongues, or 
that the divine approval is witnessed only in 
the storm and whirlwind. Wesley anism mag- 
nified the doctrine of experience in religion 
until it ran into the teaching of Hume and 
his sensational philosophy. Like Hume, the 
Methodists were soon ready to say " that 
they would not believe anything unless they 
could see it, or hear it, or touch it, or feel 
it." The Quakers have taught us better, as 
they sit listening for the still small voice. 
The prophet has taught us better, for he tells 
us that God was not in the whirlwind. Jesus 
Himself has taught us better, for He has 
[80] 



said about the laws of the Spirit, " You can- 
not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth." 
All these great prophets have taught the 
world Christianity, but Christianity is not 
Calvinism; it is not Wesley anism ; Christian- 
ity is Christ. If you want to know what Chris- 
tianity is, ask Him. He is the only Master. 

" Hushed be the noise and the strife of the schools , 
Volume and pamphlet^ sermon and speech, 
The lips of the wise and the prattle of fools ; 
Let the Son of Man teach ! 

^^ Bewilder edy dejected, and prone to despair. 

To Him, as at first, do we turn and beseech : 
' Our ears are all open ! Give heed to our prayer ! 
Son of Man, teach ! ' '' 

Religion is the personal relationship between 
God and man. The Christian religion is the 
relationship between God and man as taught 
and revealed by Jesus Christ. What is the 
relationship between God and man which 
Jesus declares .f^ When we have answered that 
question, we know the answer to the question, 
"What is Christianity.?" 
[81] 



a poung iHan'0 Religion 

According to Christ, then, what is the rela- 
tion of man and God? 

Various relationships are possible between 
personal beings, and my relationship to 
another determines my duty to him, my 
privilege and my obligation. 
He may be my blood-thirsty, cruel, and pow- 
erful enemy — then my duty becomes one of 
self-protection and circumvention. Some re- 
ligions have taught that God is mankind's 
implacable foe. The old classic epics are full 
of man's schemes and devices to thwart the 
enmity of the gods. The sacrifices they offered 
were hush-money and blackmail to buy off 
the anger of malignant deities. 
He may be a tyrannical king, and I may be 
his subject. He may be Nero, and I may be 
Paul. Then I am the creature of his despotic 
will. I am beaten with rods ; I am in peril of 
prison, and exile, and torture. His great mis- 
sion is to make laws and execute them. His 
government is a great enginery for justice 
and vengeance. If I please Him, I am unmo- 
lested; but if I offend Him, I become the 
[82] 



creature of His anger. This is the idea of 
God which has run through all history, and 
which entirely held the field in ancient the- 
ology. Living things were killed and sacri- 
ficed to propitiate Him. Inquisitions were 
established to exalt His power and to drive 
out heresy. This conception is the basis of 
the Roman Catholic Church, with its hie- 
rarchy, and its priests holding the keys of 
heaven and hell. It has come into our the- 
ology, and we have sung about the King 
of Kings and the Lord of Lords. We have 
even described the pathos of Gethsemane and 
the martyrdom of Calvary in the speech of 
the court and prison-house. We have some- 
times said that Jesus Christ was the scape- 
goat of the people — punished in their stead. 
We have sometimes represented God as slay- 
ing Him for the fulfilment of His justice; 
and then when justice was satisfied, forgiving 
erring man. 

Sometimes the Christian church has taught 

that some men may become the children of 

God. It is not kinship, but adoption. Some- 

[83] 



% poung jHan'^ Eeltgfon 

times they have said God elects certain men 
to salvation, and all other men to damnation. 
Sometimes they have said that God loves 
good men and hates wicked men. Sometimes 
they have said that we become children of 
God by adoption, if we are converted, and 
all other men are castaways. But an adopted 
child is never a real child. If we believe that, 
it is no wonder our Father's house is never 
quite oiir home, and we are never really sure 
of His affection. 

Enemies, subjects, elected favorites, adopted 
children — all these are possible relationships 
between God and man, and any one of these 
relationships would be a religion. But none 
of these would be the religion of Jesus Christ. 
Jesus Christ never taught men that God was 
their enemy. Jesus never taught men that 
God was their king. He never said that some 
men are chosen to be the favorites and the 
rest passed by. He never preached that men 
by nature are the children of wrath, and that 
they can only become the children of God by 
adoption. 

[84] 



There is a greater and deeper relationship 
between personal beings than any of these. 
The soul would wither and droop and die, if 
it fed only on fear and hate. The spiritual 
man would be a slave forever, if he were only 
a subject of Nero. I want love. I hunger for 
a friend. My father is dearer to me than a 
foster-father could be. The closest, deepest, 
dearest, divinest relationship possible between 
two personal beings is the relationship of 
parent and child. There is where Jesus starts. 
There you have the definition of Christianity 
according to Christ. God is the father of men 
and not the king of men. He is the father of 
all men and not merely of the favored man, 
or the good man, or the converted man. Re- 
ligion is man's blood kinship to the Infinite, 
and the life that grows up and out of this 
relationship of father and child. The Chris- 
tian religion is the filial life of the human 
soul. 

This is the truth for which the ages waited. 
In it lies solution for life's mysteries. 
Sometimes you and I may have arrived in 
[85] 



a goung jEan'iS aseltgion 

a foreign town at midnight. We had to in- 
quire, "What place is this?" Every scene 
was new; the language was strange. We 
asked of a fellow-traveller the way. He did 
not know. The stars shone — but they were 
dim and far away. We procured a guide, and 
he had a lantern, but his light went out and 
he led us astray. How crooked the streets! 
How confusing the distances ! It was cold and 
we were weary. We had come for beauty and 
wonder- — all was blank darkness. We expected 
friends — there were none to call us by name. 
We stumbled into a hotel; we huddled into 
a room. There was only hardship and con- 
fusion and mystery. Then the sun rose. We 
saw all the way we had come. We saw a hun- 
dred places of interest. We found friends, and 
they took us to their home. We entered cathe- 
drals, and bowed our heads in reverence. We 
stood before pictures, and they set our hearts 
on fire. We were awed by the mystery of the 
mountains as by the touch of God. It was 
Paradise. 

When Christ came the sun rose — " the light 
[86] 



of the world." It had been night — only a few 
stars were in the sky, and they were all flick- 
ering and pale. Blind guides had led us into 
the ditch. But now it is noonday everywhere. 
Ignorance, like a fog, lifts, and the shadows 
flee away, like clouds before the wind, and 
the darkness disappears. 

We know who and where we are — we are our 
Father's children in our Father's house. A 
thousand puzzles are unravelled and a thou- 
sand foolish fears are gone. Children are 
always afraid of the dark, and men ever fear 
what they do not understand. 
Our mothers taught us to pray when they 
taught us to speak. Some say it was a nur- 
sery tale. We look abroad and behold all the 
children in ignorant and pagan lands strive 
after worship. Some sneer at the prayer- 
wheel, and the rosary, and the lighted taper, 
and say, " It is all superstition." But it all 
becomes noble, and lofty, and holy, if God 
is our Father. Shall not the child climb up 
into his parent's arms and cry, and sob, or 
chatter out his hopes and fears, if he has not 
[87] 



^ goung jHan'jS Beligion 

yet learned a better speech? Prayer is the 
human child talking to his Divine Father. I 
want to learn that language. 
In every land there are sacred shrines set up, 
and every one is a Mecca for a pilgrim host. 
There are holy days, whereon men put off 
the garments of their toil, and reverently 
turn to the temple. Men there are whom we 
count holy, and we await their blessings in 
all life's deepest hours. Books there are named 
sacred, and when we read them our hearts 
burn, and we spring to our feet as those for 
whom God hath sent. Is it all a doubtful myth 
and an unreasonable faith.? If God is our 
Father, it is reality. Fathers always speak to 
their children, in word, or sign, or in inar- 
ticulate cry. Their communication is always 
adapted to the ability of the child to under- 
stand. Revelation, then, is the Divine Father 
talking to His human child. I want to learn 
to understand this heavenly speech. 
Sorrow, like a storm-cloud, gathers in every 
man's horizon. When its pent-up fury breaks, 
" a thousand fall at my side and ten thou- 
[88] 



sand at my right hand." Not only evil men 
are smitten, red-handed in their crime, but 
the innocent and the good also. The moans 
of the sweet babe break my heart, because I 
am powerless to stop its pain. The gentle 
woman, when she becomes high priestess of 
humanity, and enters unseen holies to return, 
like Mary, bearing a babe upon her breast, 
is crucified. Job was a good man — all the 
world being judge — and yet troubles break 
and " tear him like wolves after travellers lost 
in the mountains." Is there any meaning in 
the tangled maze of things? Men have suf- 
fered and fought and blasphemed even in 
this name — but all in vain. They seemed to 
be in the grip of a dangerous sea, and there 
was none to throw a life-line. 
Nay! Christ has come. Hear His word. 
" One is your Father in heaven." The mys- 
tery is still there, but it has its teeth drawn. 
The cloud still hangs in the horizon, but 
hope, like a star, shines in its heart. Even 
fathers cannot give us paths where there are 
only flowers. And even in childhood all days 
[89] 



are not holidays, and all sounds are not 
laughter. Grief hath its music. Discipline 
exacts its penalty. Endurance stands over 
against enjoyment. The lessons of life are 
learned sometimes only from stern masters. 
The bitter is as good for us as the sweet. I 
can never know the wine of joy until I have 
sipped the cup of sorrow. I do not know the 
explanation of it all, and I do not know the 
meaning of it all, but I dare not criticise my 
father's school. I trust him and I am not 
afraid. 

Some day Death will come to my house. The 
philosophers call him cruel. The poets paint 
him monster. Like the wild Indians of the 
plains, he respects neither sex nor condition. 
He has pity neither for childhood nor old 
age. I think about him in the night when I 
hear my child cough. I could go out and meet 
him, but I am afraid he will lay hands on my 
loved ones, and I cannot give them over to 
the destroyer. Then Jesus Christ comes, and 
all weeping as He speaks, for pity of my 
grief 5 says, " In my Father's house are many 
[90] 



mansions. You only know one, and'the storms 
break in there. This dimate was too harsh for 
your child, and God hath taken him into the 
Eternal summer land." Death hath changed 
his countenance. The death-dealing trireme 
has turned into a convoy of love, sent to take 
the lonesome and the weary and the worn 
out home. 

"/ know not where His islands lift 
Their jronded "palms in air; 
I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care^ 

Christianity is interpreter not only of man's 
world, but of man himself. 
Christianity deals with three personal beings 
■ — God, man, and man's fellow ; and its names 
for them are — Father, Child, and Brother. 
The divine sonship of man involves human 
brotherhood. Read the story of the Prodigal 
Son and the story of the Good Samaritan — 
there you have the sum of both law and 
gospel. 

To be a child of the Infinite — who knows 

what that means.? Men have said it sometimes 

[91] 



91 ^oung iman'0 meliijion 

of a great man, whom, when he died, they 
have made saint or hero forever. Men have 
said it of kings, when they sought to defend 
their rule as the divine right. We have 
thought it sometimes of the poet, when he 
has filled us with heavenly harmonies, and 
showed us visions of loveliness unlawful for 
human eyes to look upon. Jesus Christ said, 
man, every man, is the child of the Infinite — 
bone of His bone, flesh of His flesh, spirit of 
His spirit. What does it mean.? Who can tell.? 
I saw a brown bird sitting on the fence, and 
he looked like other birds. " I am the child 
of the clouds,'' cried the lark, and leaving 
behind forever life in the barn-yard, and the 
muck-heap, he soared away to roam in the 
wild fields of blue. As I gazed after him 
until he became a speck in the sky, I heard 
the poet say: 

''Hail to thee J blithe spirit! 
Bird thou never wert, 
That from heaven, or near it, 

Pourest thy full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 
[92] 






^^ Teach us, sprite or bird, 

What sweet thoughts are thine : 
I have never heard 

Praise of love or wine 
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 

'^ Teach me half the gladness 
That thy brain must know; 
Such harmonious madness 

From my lips woidd flow, 
The world should listen then, as I am listen- 
ing now.^^ 

The grain of corn seems of less value than a 
pebble, as it lies hidden in the cold ground. 
But, crying, " I am the child of the sun," I 
saw it come singing out of its dark prison- 
house, and go on up to the tall tasselled creat- 
ure of the upper air. The days fed it; the 
nights blessed it ; the sun kissed it ; the winds 
caressed it ; and in late autumn, when nature 
brought forth the cloth of golden splendor 
to robe it in, I knew what it was to be the 
child of the sun. 

" I am the child of God," Jesus taught men 

to say. In that hour democracy was bom. 

[93] 



a ^oung jHan'jS meltgtou 

Men everywhere said, I will not be a slave of 
the mighty, if I am the child of the Almighty. 
With the gospel of Christ there came the rise 
of the common people. You cannot keep peo- 
ple low whose relationships are high. The 
American pioneers were the children of long 
centuries of English culture. They were 
turned loose in the primeval forest. They at 
once had their church and school, and within 
thirty years they had built their college in 
the wilderness. Give an artist in a dungeon a 
burnt stick and an hour of daylight, and he 
will make a picture. Give Homer only a crust 
to eat, and at night a bed with the kine ; but 
give him a broken harp, and he will make 
such rich music that all Greece will be fired 
with ambition. Poesy is in his blood; and 
blood will tell. 

What is it to be the child of God, then.'^ 
Jesus, the village carpenter, was said to be 
Joseph's son. He was not Joseph's son. He 
was God's son ; and His divinity could not be 
hidden in an artisan's task. His mother saw 
it, when she looked into His eyes as a child; 
[ 94 ] 



it made her tremble. John saw it, when He 
came to His baptism, and men keeping silent, 
the very heavens cried out in witness. Long 
before the walk to Emmaus, the disciples had 
felt their hearts burn within them, as they 
talked with the Master. At length their eyes 
were opened, and they knew Him, " the Mes- 
siah, the Son of God." In that light shines 
the explanation of His wonderful life. He was 
on the earth, yet not of it. He was human, 
and yet He was more. He fought single- 
handed against Temptation, and there were 
left on Him no scars. No sin could stain Him 
with its slime ; no poverty could distress Him ; 
no sorrow could break Him. " Lowliest among 
the mighty, he was the mightiest among the 
lowly." His was the only perfect life the 
world has ever seen. " Son of God," men have 
said, for there is no higher name. And He 
never used His exaltation for His own crown- 
ing. He never made His virtue His luxury. 
He was always forsaking His high estate for 
the sake of the poor, and outcast, and the 
prodigal. And at last, when He had spent all 
[95] 



a ^oung jHan'^ Religion 

for the sake of the erring. He spread His 
own body like a cloak on which humanity 
might walk over sin into righteousness. 
" Surely this man was the Son of God." He 
is our type, pattern, model. Master. He was 
what we may be. Paul said it when he bade 
us " attain unto the perfect man, unto the 
fullness of the stature of manhood in Jesus 
Christ." 

We have erred. We have been satisfied with 
half the truth. We have preached Christ's 
divinity — this we ought to have done; but 
we have not practised His divinity — this we 
should not have left undone. He was not 
Joseph's son. He was not the village car- 
penter. No more are you the child of the 
world. No more are you an animal harnessed 
to bear burdens. Your ancestry reaches back 
into the Eternal. You are made for the high- 
est. Angels await your coming. " Eye hath 
not seen, ear hath not heard the glories that 
are prepared " for you. You have not known 
yourselves. You thought you w^ere a car- 
penter — it is only for a little while. You 
[96] 



thought you were weak — for the asking, 
twelve legions of angels would minister unto 
you. You have put yourself down as sinner — 
but you have an advocate with the Father. 
The Christian life is emancipation, manhood, 
stature, divinity ! 

Some of you saw Lincoln's emancipation of 
the slaves. I did not live then. But years 
after, when I was a child, there was still the 
shouting and singing. So long they had been 
bought and sold; so long they had been the 
prey of appetite, and passion, and greed, and 
hate; so long they had waited, and waiting, 
had seen their children die or dragged into 
that which was worse than death; so long 
they had prayed and wept — " How long, O 
Lord, how long? " 

You people, in this generation, who have 
always lived in the North, cannot know what 
it meant. It was like the joy in heaven among 
the angels, when a sinner comes home. Old 
men, tears streaming down their faces, cried 
out, " Thank God, I can sleep in a free man's 
grave." Splendid young men said, " I now 
[97] 



have a right to the fruit of my toil. I can 
become the possessor of property." Young 
men and women leaped to their feet and said, 
" At last we can learn, and we have a chance 
to become scholars." Old black mammies sob- 
bing, crooning, praying, said, " The day of 
Jubilee has come! At last the world knows 
that the black folks have souls ; and my chil- 
dren can marry, like white folks, and no 
longer have to mate as their fathers have 
done." The whole South-land was swept and 
rocked and tossed by one mighty billow of 
song. Even yet, I can hear their weird 
cadences rolling up^ — " The day of Jubilee 
has come ! " 

Christianity is emancipation. It strikes the 
shackles off the soul of man. It gives him a 
seat among the mighty. It unbars all privi- 
leges, and culture, and opportunity. It in- 
ducts him into a new world, with new possi- 
bilities, and new horizons, and new visions. 
The human has become divine. 
Here was the tragedy of the human emanci- 
pation of the negro — it was only a proclama- 
[98] 



tion and nothing more, and it failed. The 
slave received the right to be a free man, but 
he had not the power. The gates were opened 
and he saw into the promised land, but he 
was so lame that he could not walk there, and 
there was none to carry him. If Christianity 
was nothing more than a proclamation, pub- 
lished to the w^orld, we would of all men be 
the most miserable. What good is it for a 
starving man to see bread, if he is chained 
and cannot reach far enough to get it.^ What 
good is there for a man to be taken into a 
flower-garden, or a picture-gallery, if he is 
blind, and cannot see the beauty.? What good 
is it for a man to be inducted into a home 
or a circle of friends, if his heart is dead and 
he cannot love, nor be loved.? What advan- 
tage is it to tell me that I am the child of 
God, if I am chained fast to the earthly.? 
But that isn't all there is of Christianity. 
Jesus Christ has not only published to the 
world man's right to be the Son of God, but 
Jesus Christ is the human life of God in the 
world, and unto as " many as received Him 
LcfC, [99] 



a foxing jEan'jS Eeltgion 

gave He the power to become the sons of 
God." Christianity is a divine force. It is a 
dynamic. It is the power of God unto salva- 
tion. 

When I proclaim to you Christianity, I do 
not bring you a beautiful dream. I offer you 
strength to realize that dream. " You can do 
all things through Christ that strengtheneth 
you." 

The little plant says, I cannot be that great 
stalk of corn, and give to the world in the 
autumn time a great lump of gold, called 
the ear. Then the sun comes and says, " Oh 
little plant, you cannot do it alone, but I 
will help you. My grace is sufficient for you." 
And corn and sun walk together, and when 
autumn comes, the harvest awaits the hus- 
bandman. 

Here is the little child filled with wonder and 
confusion, as he hears the family speech with 
its thousands of words. The little child tries 
to talk, but his speech is only an inarticulate 
cry. He says, " It is no use, I never can talk 
like that." Then the mother comes and says, 
[ 100 ] 



" Oh little baby dear, you cannot talk if you 
are left entirely alone. Language is the voice 
of companionship. Isolation knows only si- 
lence. But I will help you, and my grace is 
sufficient for you." And directly, the baby 
begins to master the long hard words, and 
all the house is filled with that music, which 
is sweeter than the music of harps, the voice 
of a baby's prattle. 

The ragged boy meets the great philosopher 
in the street. Marbles, and fish-hooks, and 
swimming-pools make up all of his world. 
The old philosopher shows him the road to 
scholarship, and culture, and the wide hori- 
zons of human thought. The lad shakes his 
head and says, " It is not for me. I have 
tried to read, but I hate school; numbers are 
too much for me. I must be a blockhead." 
And then the old master says, " Oh boy, you 
cannot do this alone — how can man learn 
without a teacher.^ I will help you, I will take 
you to my house, I will make you my disciple, 
and I will pour all of my soul into your soul. 
My grace is sufficient for thee." The boy 
[101] 



pledges his life to the man's life, and the 
street urchin becomes a greater philosopher 
than his master. There they are, master and 
pupil, Socrates and Plato, walking arm in 
arm down the avenue of fame. 
And you are saying, like the rich young 
ruler, " Son of God? Oh, I wish I might be! 
I have tried to keep the laws. I have observed 
the moralities. I have tried to practise the 
golden rule. But son of the Infinite — I can- 
not be. I have failed in the little moralities, 
I have tried, and how can I rise into the wide 
horizons.?" And you shake your head and, 
like the rich young ruler, you turn away. 
Listen! Wait a little! Jesus Christ comes not 
only with the invitation, but He comes with 
the glad hand. Hear Him — " I know that by 
yourself you can do nothing. There is no 
light in the field except the sunshine out of 
the sky ; there is no good in any man, except 
God takes up His abode in his heart. I will 
help you. I will be your friend. I will share 
my life with you, as you share your crust 
with your child. I will make you my disciple. 
[ 102 ] 



^i^at i0 Cl^tiistianttt ? 

Where you dwell I will dwell. I will not leave 
you nor forsake you, and my grace is suffi- 
cient for you. For as many as receive me, to 
them will I give the power to become the sons 
of God." 

That was the pleading that touched the heart 
of the disciples long ago ; and accepting it, 
they were lifted up to sit upon the twelve 
thrones, judging the twelve tribes. The music 
of that plea even subdued the heart of Judas, 
until for a long time his life said, " I will 
try." That divine voice surely cannot fall 
unheeding upon our ears. Some there are 
here, whom men love, and whom God loves, 
and who I pray to-day will say, " I will be 
as trustful as the little plant; I will be as 
simple-hearted as the little child; I will be as 
wise as Plato; I will accept that call; I will 
stretch out my hand and seize that pierced 
hand, which is reached down to me from the 
heart of the Infinite ; and I will lift my life up 
to God. Born to be a prince, I refuse longer 
to be a slave in Egypt; and henceforth, by 
the grace of God, I will live a prince's life." 
[103] 



Wl^ati^a Cl^tijstian? 



[105] 



A Christian is a man to whom Jesus Christ intrusts 
all his fellow-men; nothing can he foreign to him which 
concerns any one of his brethren. 

Henri Perreyve. 

/ heard this definition the other day of a Christian 
man by a cynic — '^A Christian man is a man whose 
great aim in life is a selfish desire to save his own soul, 
who in order to do that, goes regularly to churchy and 
whose supreme hope is to get to Heaven when he dies.^' 
This reminds one of Professor Huxley^s examination 
paper in which the question was put — '' What is a lob- 
ster J ^ One student replied that a lobster was a red fish 
which moved backwards. The examiner noted that this 
was a very good answer, but for three things. In the first 
place J a lobster was not a fish ; second, it was not red ; 
and third, it did not move backwards. If there is any- 
thing that a Christian is not, it is one who has a selfish 
desire to save his own soul. The one thing which Chris- 
tianity tries to extirpate from a man^s nature is selfishness, 
even though it be the losing of his own soul. 

There is only one great character in the world that can 
really draw out all that is best in men. He is so far 
above all others in influencing men for good that he stands 
alone. That man was the founder of Christianity. To 
be a Christian man is to have that character for our ideal 
in life, to live under its influence, to do what He would 
wish us to do, to live the kind of life He would have 
lived in our house, and had He our day^s routine to go 
through. It would not, perhaps, alter the forms of our 
life, but it would, alter the spirit and aims and motives of 
our life, and the Christian man is he wlw in that sense 
lives under the influences of Jesus Christ. 

Henry Drummond. 

[ 106 ] 



CHAPTER FOURTH 



WW t0 a €W^tian ? 




ORDS, like writers, are best 
understood when we know 
their story. There is Hght 
on Tennyson's poems when 
we know the poet's Hfe. 
He was standing by Ar- 
thur Hallam's grave when he " faced his 
doubts and slew them." With that key un- 
lock " In Memoriam," and it becomes a sa- 
cred Psalm. 

Thomas Carlyle's favorite way of defining 
a word was to give its biography. Even we 
Americans, who have scant respect for roy- 
alty, despising the show and tinsel of it, are 
moved to reverence, when he shows us that 
the King is Konig — " the man who can " ; 
the Duke is Dux — " the man who leads " ; 
and the Prince is Princeps — " the man who is 
first to hold." Great names represent hero- 
isms. No matter how, in an after time, they 
[ 107 ] 



may be worn by shams and little folk, they 
stand for realities and giants. Counterfeit 
coin does not discredit gold; it bears witness 
to its worth. A good way to know words is 
to learn their biography. 
I do not know any word, whose story men 
need to renew, more than the word Chris- 
tian. It is always on our lips, and yet I am 
not sure that we know it very well. Anyway, 
it would refresh us to go back and stand by 
the fountain of its origin, and taste in the 
spring that river " that makes glad the city 
of God." We know Americanism, but it makes 
us strong, once a year anyhow, to go and 
stand by Plymouth Rock. 
A living writer has written a widely read 
book called " The Christian.'' But when we 
read it through we say, " Where is the Chris- 
tian.'^ " John Storm was a Christian, doubt- 
less, but it was " at a poor dying rate." We 
will never let John Storm stand for Chris- 
tianity. He is not a Christian after the man- 
ner of Him who said, " If I be lifted up I 
will draw all men unto myself." 
[ 108 ] 



John Bunyan has drawn a famous picture. 
His Christian is worthy of its fame. But it 
would never do for the portrait of Jesus. 
Never could we think of Him who prayed 
for His disciples, " Not that thou shouldest 
take them out of the world, but that thou 
shouldest keep them from the evil," as spend- 
ing all his life to escape from the wicked world 
into the City Beautiful. For the Christian, as 
for Browning: 

^^This world^s no blot for us, 
Nor blank; it means intensely and means 
good J ^ 

Yet Bunyan's conception has taken a large 
hold upon the mind of the church. I think 
there have been times when the church has 
taken more theology from Bunyan and Mil- 
ton than from the teachings of Jesus. I know 
that when I was a child the preachers all de- 
scribed this world as a " City of Destruc- 
tion." When they exhorted me to become a 
Christian, it was in order that I might go to 
heaven when I died. I understood Christian- 
[109] 



ity to be a scheme, a device, a superior and 
high sort of life-saving service. I did not see 
anything in the Christian life to love. It only 
seemed to be a hard, and sad, and solemn 
necessity. Worldly life, as it was described to 
me, might be " naughty, but it was nice." 
But I had to become a Christian, as the farm- 
ers had to pay their taxes — and they never 
did that cheerfully. In order to become a 
Christian, I was taught that I must believe 
certain forms of hard and fast words. I did 
not disbelieve them ; neither could I say that I 
believed them. I was afraid that hidden away 
in them were meanings I did not see. I simply 
did not understand. I was told that I must 
pass through a certain great crisis and have 
a certain definite kind of feeling. I could not 
be a Christian, until I had done that. They 
said I was not quite old enough for that; but 
they were never quite certain whether or not 
I was not so old, and so accountable, that if 
I died without that experience, I should 
be lost. I was very unhappy about it. With- 
out knowing why, I rebelled against it all. 
[110] 



It is all plain enough now. Those were good, 
earnest people, but narrow. They had mis- 
taken John Bunyan's Christian's experience 
for all Christian experience. They mistook 
the particular for the general; the part for 
the whole. John Bunyan's Christian was a 
Christian ; but he was not a typical Christian 
according to Him who said, " I am come that 
ye may have life and have it more abun- 
dantly." 

Let us turn to the New Testament — 
" And the disciples were first called Chris- 
tians at Antioch." Antioch was the second 
capital of Christianity. Indeed, it were well 
called the first capital of Christianity. Judea 
had been its cradle, and Jerusalem was well- 
nigh its grave. In that city was Pontius 
Pilate's judgment-seat; there was the High 
Priest's palace ; " without the city walls was 
the green hill where our Lord was crucified." 
Christianity never blossomed amid such sur- 
roundings. It was here Ananias and Sapphira 
made the first scandal in the church. It was 
here that the fires of the first persecution 

' [111] 



were kindled, where Stephen fell, and the 
disciples were scattered. Here Christianity 
was little more than a sect. It was called 
" The Way." It was at Antioch that Chris- 
tianity was born again. Here it burst the 
bands of Judaism, and became a world re- 
ligion. Here the Gentiles came in. Here the 
Apostle Paul began his marvellous ministry. 
Here foreign missions were born. 
Every now and again through the ages, 
Christianity has renewed its youth, and burst 
into some swift, sweeping enthusiasm. So it 
blossomed at Florence, when the Florentine 
Monk put the silver trumpet of the gospel to 
his lips, and blew a blast that shook the 
mediaeval world. Such was the revival at 
Geneva, under John Calvin. Such was the re- 
vival, called the Reformation, under Martin 
Luther. But never has Christian revival sur- 
passed the one at Antioch. 
Antioch was a city of Greek culture. It was 
the home of the intellect. It also was the home 
of vice and pleasure and avarice. It would 
be hard to understand how this Jewish 
[112] 



a^i^at (js a Ci^rijstian? 

preacher moved the entire city, if we had not 
seen Europe shaken by Peter the Hermit; 
England shaken by John Wesley; Italy 
shaken by Savonarola. Given unto a man who 
knows how to play it, and who has divine 
harmonies in his own soul, the human heart 
is like a harp, when love lays hold and smites 
all the chords with might. 
In our time we have seen such wonders. " Men 
do not care for sermons ! " Come with me on 
a blustery, March day into Boston; a north- 
easter is blowing; the weather is so disagree- 
able that Mark Twain said, he reverently 
believed that the Almighty had made every- 
thing else in the world but the New England 
weather. When we walk around on Tremont 
Street by the Common, we find the street for 
blocks, jammed with a mass of men, all crowd- 
ing into the dim silence of old St. Paul's. 
When at last the galleries, and aisles, and 
choir loft, and chancel are filled, and there is 
no more standing room left, the doors are 
closed, and those who have not gotten in go 
away. There is no fine music. There is sung 
[113] 



a hymn. There is a short prayer. And then, 
a great, giant man climbs into the pulpit, 
and reads from a pocket New Testament his 
text. The hour is twelve o'clock at noon on 
busy Monday, and this scene is repeated 
every day during all the week. Only men are 
in that audience, and they are the busiest 
business men of Boston. What is the occasion 
of all this hubbub? Only this — a preacher is 
going to preach. 

Then Phillips Brooks opens his lips, and 
heart, and vision, and for thirty minutes 
waves, tides, and floods of appeal, emotion, 
aspiration, roll, and eddy, and whirl until 
we seem to be tossed and borne away on the 
bosom of an impassioned sea. He is all sub- 
duing and irresistible. Before we know it, 
tears come down our cheeks, and the preacher 
seems to be down under us, lifting us heaven- 
ward. "Let us pray," he cries, and as out of 
a full heart the preacher talks to God, all 
heads are bowed. Lips say, " Our Father," 
v/hich have not formed the words since child- 
hood. Many from that hour date their con- 
[114] 



version. When they come out into the street, 
it is as if they walked upon air. They 
have seen a new world; they have heard a 
new message; they have fallen in love with a 
new Master; they have been lifted up into 
a new hope. 

So the multitudes in Antioch were carried 
away by a great Jewish preacher in the long 
ago. So the entire city was stirred and the 
regions round about. A new movement, like 
the fire from heaven, fell upon them, and 
under the spell of it they coined a new word 
— " The disciples were called Christians first 
at Antioch." 

It was not oratory that wrought the revo- 
lution in Antioch. " Enticing words of man's 
wisdom," on the part of the preacher, and 
" itching ears," on the part of the people, 
was not the secret with which he " turned the 
world upside down." 

It was not oratory in Boston. Men forgot 
Phillips Brooks as soon as he began to 
preach. You could not see the man for the 
m.essage. " Words are the smoke of thought." 
[115] 



a goung iEan'js Eeltgton 

What was the message that blazed? No one 
who ever heard the Boston preacher will ever 
forget his one burning message — " Mankind 
are the children of God." " The intrinsic no- 
bility and divinity of human life " were the 
words always on his lips. Paul's message was 
the same message—" Jesus, and Him cruci- 
fied." The Divine dwells in the human. It was 
the message pictured by Jesus Christ in the 
Prodigal Son. We have been familiar with 
its words ever since childhood, but in spite of 
familiarity, we can never sleep under its 
music. 

I remember very well hearing some men tell 
how they acted in one of the Southern pris- 
ons, where for months they had starved, and 
suffered, and where many had died, and for 
the rest, life had been worse than death, when 
one day they heard the sound of a bugle. 
At first it was faint and interrupted, and then 
it grew clearer and nearer, and the message 
it rang out was " The Northern army is com- 
ing to set you free ! " Men danced and 
shouted for happiness. Those who were 
[116] 



marked with death put off their dying, and 
with one mighty effort staggered to their 
feet. It was a delirium of rejoicing. Men cried 
for joy. " We will not die in the prison pen, 
we are going home," they shouted. 
Somewhat like that was the scene in Antioch, 
and it is always seen when the Christian gos- 
pel is proclaimed. For many of us are spirits 
in prison. The dreams of our childhood have 
faded like the stars in the morning sky. The 
innocence of our youth has passed away in 
life's fierce heat, like the morning dew from 
off the grass. We have had our fling and we 
have failed. We are in captivity to desire or 
appetite. We are sore and wounded. One wing 
is clipped and we cannot soar. Men have lost 
faith in our goodness ; and sometimes we have 
lost faith in ourselves. We stand ready to ex- 
cuse our sins, saying, " It is my nature : my 
father was a drunkard. Man is one-half brute 
anyhow." 

And then the Christian gospel comes and 
says, " You are spirit and related to the In- 
finite God. His name is love, for it is His 
[117] 



a poung i^an'js Eeligton 

nature. You are related to Him as is the little 
child in your home related to you — bone of 
His bone, flesh of His flesh, blood of His 
blood, nature of His nature. 
You may be amazed by the statement, but 
do not mistake it. That saying, " father and 
child," their mutual love, their trust, their 
hopes, their likeness, all that is the language 
of your own fireside. All that is the gospel of 
the Christian religion. And the man who tries 
to live that filial life of the soul, and allows 
the Divine Father to help him live that life, 
that man is a Christian man. 
The child cannot do without the father. 
Even after he has grown to man's estate, he 
cannot do without the father. Even after we 
are men grown, and our fathers die and leave 
us, the world seems lonesome. We pity the 
orphan, not so much for his grief, as because 
he has lost something out of his life, which 
he can never find. 

Jesus describes a young man, who thought 

he could do without his father, and who took 

all his goods and went into a far country. 

[118] 



WW ijs a Cl^rijsttan ? 

" There arose a mighty famine in that land ; 
and he began to be in want.'' At last he lived 
with the swine and dined with them. When- 
ever a man tries to live without God, there 
always comes a famine in the house. Even if 
the crops had not failed, even if work had 
not been scarce, the young man, who had 
turned his back upon his home relationship, 
would have been hungry anyhow. Any soul, 
living outside of this filial relationship of 
God, is a dissatisfied and starving soul. 
We have never read that parable of Jesus 
well. We have saved it for the Sunday we 
preached in the County Jail, and waved it 
above the head of our neighbor's reprobate 
boy, or called it " glad tidings " for the 
slums. We have never applied it to ourselves. 
We have supposed that the prodigals always 
have ragged clothes; that they all consort 
with harlots and are riotous. Any man and 
every man, in slum or boulevard, who does 
not act as a part of God's family, is a starv- 
ing man. I know people who think they are 
good livers and are starving to death. They 
[119] 



a ^oung jEan'js JReltgion 

feed on the carob-pods of worldliness; but 
these things will not sustain life. Made for 
God, their souls cannot live on less. Neither 
money, nor fame, nor pleasure can bring 
peace to the human heart. We are made for 
God, as we are made for bread, and for 
knowledge, and for love, and without God 
we die. The child cannot do without the 
father. The father cannot do without the 
child. 

What is the palace which he has built, if his 
loved one is ragged and hungry, or lost in 
a distant and dangerous land? Preachers have 
not said much about it, but God cannot do 
without His children. Fathers and mothers 
have a heart hunger, even when their children 
grow up and go out to places of trust and 
honor in the world. The old world is never 
the same. The mother's eye has lost a light, 
and a perpetual shadow is in her face. The 
father does not work as he used to — he has 
lost his aim. They are strangely silent and 
walk softly and haltingly and stop every now 
and then to listen — they are waiting for news. 
[ 120 ] 



A man told me the other day that in his 
childhood he grew weary of home and ran 
away to sea. For ten years he was before the 
mast. He visited strange lands. He became 
coarse, and hard, and brutal. Never once in 
that time did he write home. At last sickness 
and heart hunger overtook him. He took ship 
for his native land. He sailed into the great 
port; he took a skiff and rowed across the 
arm of the bay to the little inlet where his 
childhood's home had stood. He wondered if 
they were dead. He was afraid they had for- 
gotten him. He feared they had cast him 
unworthy out of their love forever. He did 
not dare draw near in daytime. He was 
ashamed to be seen. But when the shadows 
fell he rowed toward the old familiar land- 
ing. Someone was moving about with a light. 
He again put out to sea because he did not 
want to meet strangers, and evidently they 
were expecting somebody. At ten o'clock he 
rowed back again, but they were still there, 
and the light also. At eleven o'clock, when he 
rowed back, the light was there, and someone 
[ 121 ] 



a ^oung jman'sj Beltgton 

was trimming it, and when he drew near, lo ! 
it was his old father, weary-eyed and gray, 
who had put that hght there for a welcome 
sign to his long-lost son. Not only that night, 
but for every night during all those ten years, 
he had set that lantern there to guide him 
home. 

If the teachings of Jesus are true, God is 
like that. And though we may forget Him, 
or wander away, forever He doth yearn for 
us and wait for us to come home. In the win- 
dows of heaven He hath set a light to guide 
us home. For God is our father, and a father 
never forgets. The father cannot do ithout 
the child. 

The child may find his father. That is why, 
once a year, you and I make a long journey 
that once more, for a few days, we may sit 
down by the old hearthstone and renew the 
ties of earthly affection. But space is not the 
only separation between souls. Estrange- 
ment is separation. Ingratitude and indif- 
ference are separations. Wrong-doing is a 
great gulf fixed. But we can bridge even that 
[ 122 ] 



W^^at i^ a Ci^rtjstian ? 

chasm. Have you never wronged your earthly 
father and been estranged from him, sepa- 
rated, it seemed, as far as the east is from 
the west? And then have you not been able, 
when you came to yourself, to go back again, 
or when you confessed your wrong, and when 
you showed your love, did not heart answer 
heart and did not love kindle love? That is 
the gospel of Christianity — not only that 
man is the child of God; not only that God 
loves His child; not only that man cannot 
do without God, and God cannot do without 
man, but every child may return to his father, 
and his father is on his way seeking his child. 
If you have gone away from God, turn 
around. If you are sorry, let the tears fall. 
If you have done wrong, say so. " With the 
mouth confession is made unto salvation." 
Turn your face toward the Infinite; stretch 
out your hands to the Father's outstretched 
hands. Take Him into your confidence; pour 
out your sorrow and listen to His counsel. 
Walk with Him; live with Him; love Him, 
and directly they who look upon you will say, 
[ 123 ] 



even as they who see children become men, 
" Like Father, hke son." At last we grow to 
resemble those who are akin to us and with 
whom we live. 

The Christian gospel is more than a message 
— it is a manifestation. It speaks not only to 
the ear, but it appeals to the eye. Those 
Greeks might have said to Paul, " It is a 
theory, a beautiful dream, the child of your 
hope." So Paul gave them demonstration — 
he preached " Jesus, and Him crucified." 
Jesus is Christianity in the concrete. Jesus 
Christ is the love of God made manifest. 
Men there were in early Virginia who heard 
Patrick Henry deliver his thrilling message 
about liberty, and they remained unkindled. 
They could not understand all the wide sweep 
of it. But when they saw Washington, say- 
ing, " I will raise a thousand men, and equip 
them at my own expense, and march to Bos- 
ton," gather his regiment, they went out and 
enlisted. Truth, spoken, interests us. Truth, 
incarnate, moves us. " Actions speak louder 
than words." Men heard the prophets say, 
[ 124 ] 



I^i^at (0 a Ci^rijstian? 

" God is a father " ; they heard Jesus say, 
" God is love." They quibbled and wondered 
how it could be. Then there appeared a won- 
drous sight — Jesus having compassion on 
men and healing their disease. Jesus touch- 
ing and taking little children in His arms to 
bless them. They saw Him look at Peter after 
he had denied Him thrice. They heard Him 
pray for His enemies and make excuse for 
their crimes. They saw Him sitting down to 
dine with the publican and the sinners. They 
saw Him deal with the soiled Magdalen and 
watched Him go to the cross and die for 
men who hated Him. They heard Him at last 
say, " He that hath seen me hath seen the 
Father," and their hearts caught fire, and 
they knew for a fact 

^^The love of God is broader 

Than the measure of man^s mind, 
And the heart of the Eternal 
Is most wonderfully kind.^' 

To be a Christian, then, is to receive a new 

Master. You say, " I love Christ, but I can- 

[ 125 ] 



not join myself to Him because I do not 
understand Him. I do not know about this 
Virgin birth. I do not see how miracles can 
be true." Peter did not see or know at first. 
Jesus would be no Christ, if you could know 
all about Him before you trusted Him. When 
you were a child you knew nothing about 
the mysteries of motherhood. You do not 
know much yet, but from a child you have 
let your mother mother you. When you went 
to study electricity with Thomas Edison, you 
could not see how he could do such wonders. 
If you had known, there had been no need 
of the master. You call a man master because 
of the part you do not understand. You ex- 
pect him to be able to do things that you 
cannot do. If you come to enroll in a school, 
nobody wants to know what you think about 
the teachers. These are the questions for en- 
trance — " Do you want to know? '' " Will 
you try?" ^' Will you obey?" "Will you 
trust your teacher and follow him? " 
When you come to church, you do not need 
to give your definition of the nature of 
[126] 



Christ, or your attitude on the miracles. 
These things may be interesting, but they 
are not fundamental. Will you be His dis- 
ciple and trust Him and obey Him and fol- 
low Him? Will you take His strength for 
your weakness. His knowledge for your Ig- 
norance, His grace for your frailty.'' Will 
you strive to be like Him and let Him help 
you to strive.? In the beginning Apostleship 
was discipleship. In the beginning the seer 
was in the kindergarten. In the beginning the 
millionaire had only pennies in the bank. If 
you are going to be a Christian, then in the 
beginning you are to be the scholar of the 
Lord Christ. Knowledge will come, wisdom 
will come, vision will come. You will reach 
high altitudes, but you must start where you 
are. The little plant cannot bloom all by 
itself, but it can yield itself to the touch of 
the sun and the sun can make it bud and 
blossom. You cannot know all the mysteries, 
but you can yield yourself to Jesus Christ, 
and He will manifest God unto you. 
In a famous passage, the greatest preacher 
[127] 



of our time, Henry Ward Beecher, tells us 
how he discovered God in Christ: 
" When I found that when His disciples did 
wrong, He drew them closer to Him than 
He did before; and when pride and jealousy 
and rivalry and all vulgar and worldly feel- 
ings rankled in their bosoms, He opened His 
heart to them to heal all their infirmities ; 
when I found that it was Christ's nature to 
lift men out of weakness to strength, out of 
impurity to goodness, I felt that I had found 
God. I shall never forget the feelings with 
which I walked forth that May morning. The 
golden pavements will never feel to my feet 
as then the grass to them; and the singing 
of the birds in the woods — for I roamed in 
the woods — was cacophonous to the sweet 
music of my thoughts ; and there were no 
forms in the universe which seemed to me 
graceful enough to represent the Being, a 
conception of whose character had just 
dawned on my mind. I felt, when I had with 
the Psalmist called upon the heavens, the 
earth, the mountains, the streams, the floods, 
[ 128 ] 



the birds, the beasts, and universal being to 
praise God, that I had called upon nothing 
that could praise Him enough for the reve- 
lation of such a nature as that in the Lord 
Jesus Christ." Afterward the full glory of 
the Divinity was revealed. We hear him say: 
" All that there is of God to me is bound up 
in that name. But Christ stands my mani- 
fest God. All that I know is of Him and in 
Him. I put my soul into His arms as, when 
I was born, my father put me into my 
mother's arms. I draw all my life from Him. 
I bear Him in my thoughts hourly, as I 
humbly believe that He also bears me. For I 
do truly believe that we love each other! — 
I, a speck, a particle, a nothing, only a mere 
beginning of something that is gloriously 
yet to be when the warmth of God's bosom 
shall have been a summer for my growth — 
and He, the Wonderful, Counselor, the 
Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the 
Prince of Peace ! " 

In the end, then, the Christian finds in Christ 

the glory and the love and the wonder of 

[ 129 ] 



^ goung jman'js Eeltgion 

God. But in the beginning, to be a Chris- 
tian is to be a disciple of the Master. 
But men hesitate. They are afraid of the 
high altitudes. The heights seem dizzy. Sup- 
pose they should try to walk there and fall. 
Judas fell. Peter fell. So, like the rich young 
ruler, there are many who admire and then 
hesitate. They are afraid to try. I count it 
a gain that men have so high regard for the 
Christian life. But the man who hesitates 
between his ideal and his fear is already lost. 
That is the tragedy of the young man 
whom Jesus loved. 

Everything that is noble is high. Scholar- 
ship is high. "It is high — I cannot attain 
unto it," are the first words of the ignorant 
boy when he looks up to the heights where 
the scholars dwell. Then fear gives place to 
wisdom, and we hear him mutter, " It is in 
me ; for that I am come and to that end was 
I born." And teachers lead him on. Father- 
hood is high — there never was a strong man 
who was not afraid of his babe. But whisper- 
ing, " The Lord has sent him," he takes the 
[130] 



tiny life into his keeping and love leads him 
on. Friendship is high; music is high; ora- 
tory is high; business is high and hard. No 
one of us can succeed in any of these things 
except we were made for them and except 
we receive help. 

Modem civilization is a " Lend a Hand So- 
ciety." We lend a hand to the child as it 
starts to walk. We lend a hand to the young 
man as he starts in business. Everybody lends 
a willing hand to the bride making her 
home, and to the mother nestling her first- 
born. We lend a hand to the poor, to the 
sick, and to the outcast. " The strong bear 
the infirmities of the weak." Our greatest 
men serve. The giants are gentle. Why.^ It 
did not used to be so. The old-time heroes 
were Hercules, with giant arm and wooden 
club; Ulysses, crafty, cruel, and cunning; 
Alexander, who died of a broken heart 
because there were no more nations to crush 
and no more people whose liberties he could 
take away. What has brought about the 
change.? I will tell you, Jesus of Nazareth 
[131] 



has been in the world and He has showed us 
a better way. He has made manifest the Di- 
vine way — it is to bear one another's burdens. 
So the modern world is becoming a " Lend 
a Hand Society." 

Now, my friends, we can never too much 
emphasize this deepest thing about Chris- 
tianity. It is " glad tidings " — " Mankind 
are the children of God." It does give us the 
sweetest and gentlest of Masters — " Man 
never spake like this man." But Christianity 
is more than good news. Jesus Christ is more 
than friend and teacher. A friend may be 
found who will lay down his life for his 
friend, but God commendeth His love to us 
in this, " that while we were yet sinners Christ 
died for us." The fathers did wisely to make 
much of Calvary. God is the suffering, suc- 
coring Father. The cross is the symbol of 
God's perpetual heartbreak over His wan- 
dering boy. What Christ did in Judea, the 
Father does everywhere. What Christ did for 
three years, the Father does in all years. As 
Christ was with the twelve disciples, strength 
[ 132 ] 



for their weakness, courage for their fear, 
faith for their doubt, pardon for their sin, 
He is with all His disciples. Christianity is 
God's " Lend a Hand Society." 
You can lead this Christian life because 
" you can do all things through Christ, who 
strengtheneth you." That is the Christian 
message. It is not the Ten Commandments. 
It is not the Two Commandments. It is not a 
programme of ethics. It is not a dream of a 
golden age. It is the strength of God re- 
vealed in human life, redeeming it and trans- 
figuring it. " It is the power of God unto 
Salvation." This is the Christian man's cry, 
" I know in whom I have believed, and am 
persuaded that He is able to keep that which 
I have committed unto Him against the great 
day." This is the Christian man's cry, " I 
know Him who is able to prevent me from 
falling and present me faultless before the 
throne of His glory with exceeding joy." 
The Christian life is a life lived on the Divine 
pattern, guaranteed and vouched for by the 
power of God. 

[133] 



Jesus describes a young man, who has wasted 
his life, turning about and starting for his 
home. He calls him the Prodigal Son. He 
describes the reception by his father, who has 
grown weary-eyed with watching. It is His 
picture of the Heavenly Father. He shows 
us the elder brother in his petulance and his 
bigotry, refusing to rejoice that the lost had 
been found. It is His portrait of the Phari- 
sees of that time and all times. 
You and I have imagined all the discour- 
agements the young man had, as he was 
about to start out upon his journey, and the 
bad advice he received. The Epicure laughed 
at him and said, " Eat, drink and be merry, 
for to-morrow you die." The Materialist 
said, " Mind your business. Do not go out 
in search of a dream. Your notion of finding 
your father's house is like finding a pot of 
gold at the end of the rainbow. It is all a 
childish dream. Stick to your money-getting. 
Money makes the world wag." And then the 
Philosopher came to him and assured him 
that if he had a father, he could not find 
[ 134 ] 



him ; and if he had a home he could not find 
it. I think that young man was more sorely 
beset by his friends than was Job. 
But I wonder if we have thought about his 
encouragements — the inspirations that led 
him on. There was the encouragement within 
himself — he knew that he belonged at home. 
At times his father's blood ran hot in his 
veins. Then he had fitful memories of the 
house where he was born, and all that glo- 
rious time " when heaven lay all about him in 
his infancy." And he had other encourage- 
ments — I am sure he had heard from home. 
The other day I heard the story of a Prodi- 
gal. He had been away a long time. He had 
written no letters and he had read none. He 
drifted to the city and then to the plains. He 
mingled with tne coarse life in the mines. 
The marks of his dissipation were written all 
over him. At last in sheer desperation he en- 
listed with the army. The Spanish war came. 
He was wounded, and then fever set in, and 
for days he lingered upon the borderland, 
not knowing whether he would stay or go. 
[135] 



31 ^oung jHan'js aseltgion 

His Vermont mother found out his condition, 
and where he was, and she sent him letters, 
blotched with tears and throbbing with love. 
She asked him to come home and they would 
forget the past. They would live for the 
future. Not satisfied with this, she sent a 
messenger all the way to Florida. The mes- 
senger sat by the side of his cot and described 
the old home, until there were tears in his 
eyes, and told him about his mother's love 
and long watching for his return, until there 
was a lump in his throat. She brought him 
a box from home, and in it were apples 
that grew in the old orchard, and cookies 
that his mother had made, and jelly which 
she had put in the glass with her own hands. 
Then one day the train came, and straight 
from the train to the hospital came a woman 
whose face was deeply graven with the lit- 
erature of sorrow. With a cry she sprang to 
her son, and, as they wept together, he 
poured out all the sorrow and the shame of 
his life, and his contrition, and she put her 
arms about him and hugged him tighter to 
[ 136] 



her heart and smoothed his face, and said, 
" Now there ! now there ! let us forget it ! I 
have come to take you home." Do you think 
it is any wonder that that wounded boy 
heard the overtures of love and forgiveness 
and went back to the Vermont homestead? 
But hath not God sent to the Prodigal let- 
ters upon letters, filled with His sympathy, 
and throbbing with the affection of His great 
heart? Hath He not sent after him many 
messengers, and have they not cried with 
Isaiah, " Come, let us reason together, 
though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be 
as white as snow " ? Doth He not send to him 
blessings and benedictions and gifts, which 
are as grateful as the box from mother to 
the sick boy in the camp ? And lo ! at last doth 
there not come one whose form is like the 
form of the Son of Man? When He touched 
the diseases of men, have they not been 
healed? When they have sobbed out their 
sins upon his breast, have they not been for- 
given? And ever afterwards have they not 
said, " like Abraham, I have been entertain- 
[137] 



ing angels unawares " ; "I have been found 
by the God whom I had forgotten " ? Is it 
any wonder that the young man went back 
home? The wonder had been if he had stayed 
in the strange land. The only amazement is 
that any man can remain away from His 
Father's house, and forego the Father's love 
and its over-arching care. 



[ 1^8 1 



Ci^e i^togramme of tl^e Ci^ttjstian 
JLtfe 



[139] 



/ beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of 
God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, ac- 
ceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, 

Romans 12 : 1. 

Not so shall it be among you : but whosoever would 
become great among you shall be your minister; and 
whosoever would be first among you shall be your ser- 
vant : even as the Son of man came not to be ministered 
unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for 
many, Matthew 20 : 26-28. 

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, 
Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom pre- 
pared for you from the foundations of the world: for I 
was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty^ 
and ye gave me drink ; I was a stranger, and ye took me 
in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited 
me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall 
the righteous answer him, saying. Lord, when saw we 
thee an hungered, and fed thee ? or athirst, and gave thee 
drink ? 

And when saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in f 
or naked, and clothed thee f And when saw we thee sick, 
or in prison, and came unto thee ? 

And the King shall answer and say unto them. Verily 
I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these 
my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me, 

Matthew 25 : 31-46. 



[ 140] 



CHAPTER FIVE 



tift 




are 



ORDS, like people, 
alive. Neglect them, and 
they will die. Honor them, 
and they will unfold into 
richness. It is no wonder 
that Henry Van Dyke, as 
he bends over his writing, prays, " Help me 
to deal honestly with words and people, for 
both are alive." Words, like men, grow deeper 
with age and larger with experience. Many 
a word, harsh or heartless in youth, has become 
wondrously tender in old age. " Spirit " was 
once but a passing wind with icy breath. 
" Spirit," grown old, has become religious, 
and represents for us the tender touch of 
God. 

Words are cups in which truth is measured, 

and when they grow larger our truth becomes 

[141] 



a ^oung i^lan'is Eeligion 

more. " Patriotism " became a new word after 
Washington. " Freedom " grew tenfold richer 
after Lincoln. " Love," we never know love 
even from our parents. It is not until we have 
children growing that we know for a fact 
that " love never faileth." So words grow as 
they age, and widen, and deepen as they have 
experience, and advance in stature and wis- 
dom. We should be sure that we treat words 
as living beings grown up, and do not try to 
thrust them back into the cradle of their in- 
fant meaning. We should recognize their full 
personality, and reverently allow them to de- 
clare all their message. 

I know of nothing more fascinating than this 
study of words, and the necessity of, every 
now and then, getting acquainted with them 
all over again. 

So we have made a new study of the old 
words, " Religion," " Christianity," and 
" Christian." Over this last word I want to 
linger another hour. 

Of a Christian there have been many cele- 
brated definitions. There is the famous one of 
[142] 



programme of ti^e Ci^tijstian life 

John Bunyan, which we all love because of 
its picture of escape from sin, but which we 
find fault with because it has no salvation 
of the world from sin. For ages we have been 
touched by the Christian life as described by 
Thomas a Kempis. There is about it mystical 
vision, and reverence, and adoration, which in 
our time we would do well to remember. But 
it does not express all that we mean by the 
word Christian. It lacks action. It is almost 
negative, like so many of our hymns, which 
seem to teach that the Christian life is " to sit 
and sing one's self away to everlasting bliss." 
There is something left out. That absent 
quality for us is better expressed by the prac- 
tical James, who teaches us that " pure relig- 
ion and undefiled before our God and Father 
is this — to visit the fatherless and widows in 
their affliction and to keep himself unspotted 
from the world." 

After all, Paul knew the Western world better 
than James did, for did he not sail upon 
Western seas and preach in European cap- 
itals.? He seems to have caught the very tern- 
[ 143 ] 



a poimg jHan'jS meligton 

per of the Western mind when he said, " I 
beseech you to present your bodies a living 
sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is 
your reasonable service." It is Paul's portrait 
of a Christian. It is a noble portraiture ; its 
lines are fit to limn the Master's face. And as 
we study it, we see that a Christian man is 
a man who does more than other men. A 
Christian is a Christ. A Christian life is life 
with a programme. 

Indeed, it seems to us that Jesus so taught 
and lived. Did He not represent the Kingdom 
of God by " leaven," which comes from the 
same word as " lever," and means to raise up 
and elevate.? Did He not call a Christian man 
" the light of the world " .? And light is posi- 
tive, creative, life-giving. He likens His dis- 
ciples unto salt, and salt rescues from corrup- 
tion. What, after all, saves this world from 
becoming utterly rotten and corrupt but the 
Christian life in it.? Matthew Arnold says, 
" Show me a spot ten miles square in any part 
of the world where Christianity has not gone, 
in which the life of men and the honor of 
[ 1^^ ] 



I^roijramme of ti^e ci^tijstian Life 

women and children are safe, and I will give 
up Christianity." There is no such outside 
spot. The Christian is the world's saviour. 
More and more do we define the Christian as 
a man with a programme. 
The first word of the Christian programme is 
Service. 

Religion has been overmuch in the passive. 
Going to the utmost limit of our strength on 
week days, on the seventh morning we have 
said, " A little more sleep, a little more slum- 
ber." Sunday was our rest day, and church 
was our rest cure. Too often ministers have 
lived in a cloister, and if outside of it they 
have been " in the world, but not of it." The 
pew has been too generally an absorbent. In 
the Roman Church the priests talked for them, 
and in the Protestant Church the ministers 
talked to them. In both places religion was all 
talk, and all the pew had to do was to listen. 
The church has been drowsy from overeating 
and lack of exercise. 

It was not so in the early church. Then every 

man was a worker, and whenever, through all 

[ 145 ] 



a goung jEan'jsi Religion 

Christian history, the laymen have set to 
work, the church has gone forward like an 
army with banners. John Wesley saved Eng- 
land from disaster when he sent out his lay- 
preachers into English highways and byways. 
All the modern movements, like the Young 
Men's Christian Association, and the young 
people's activities, and the missionary move- 
ments, have come about when laymen have be- 
come workers. A Christian life has too often 
been a life with an experience — one single ex- 
perience in the past which is told over and 
over again. The Christian life has too often 
been a life with a doxy — words falling trip- 
pingly from the tongue, but they were words 
from which the life had gone out. 
But life is not life until it is in action. The 
Christian life is a life with a programme. Paul 
calls it " a living sacrifice." Jesus taught it 
when He said, " He who would be great 
among you let him be the servant of all." 
And in His picture of the final judgment. He 
gave the crown of life to those who had served 
God's little ones. These teachings seemed 
[ 146 ] 



I^rogramme of tl^e Cl)t:ijstian life 

foolishness to His disciples. All the world has^ 
supposed that the idle man was the gentleman. 
Jesus has shown us that only to him who serves 
is given the crown. Even the kings of the 
earth have set themselves and have taken 
counsel together how they may serve. The 
motto of one royal house is " Ich Dien " — " I 
serve." There is no harder worked man in 
Europe than Emperor William. If Germany 
were to become a Republic to-morrow, William 
would not be long without a job. He could 
become a captain of industry. God is the first 
great worker. Jesus was a worker with hands 
and brains and heart. The Christian man 
must be a worker. Service is the pathway to 
glory- 
Let the church make much of worship. Let her 
spire fling itself high against the sky. Let 
art lend to the temple the language of beauty. 
Let choirs chant and organs, deep-toned, 
praise. Let eloquence smite her lyre. Teach all 
the multitudes to soar on wings of aspiration. 
Open the gates and let them see all mysteries. 
Make much of worship, but in God's name for- 
[ 147 ] 



get not work. Service, Christlike service, is 
the programme of the Christian Hfe. 
The second word on the programme is 
" Holy." It is a holy service. Holy does not 
mean ragged and dirty, as the monk thought. 
Holy does not mean sanctimoniousness and 
piosity, as men have sometimes thought. Holy 
does not refer solely to altars, and holy days, 
and ceremonies, as the world has too often 
thought, when, as Ruskin says, " you build 
your churches Gothic, but you do not build 
your homes, or business houses, Gothic." Out 
of this has come all that hateful and baneful 
division of life into the sacred and secular, 
wherein men worship God on one day in the 
seven, and worship the " Goddess-of-getting- 
on " all other days. 

Holy means reserved, set apart, sacred. The 
cup in the temple is " holy." The bunch of 
grapes chosen for sacrifice while yet unripe, 
because of its perfection, is " holy." The boy 
given by his parents, while yet a babe, to the 
ministry, is " holy." 

In all our cities and towns one sees picked 
[ 148 ] 



^^rogtamme of tl^e Ci^ttjitian life 

young men, occupied with ordinary business 
all day, meet together in the evening for study 
and for drill. In that hour they wear a uni- 
form; they hold themselves ready for action; 
at a minute's call they will fall into regiments 
and be on their way to the field or the riot. 
We call them our National Guard. They are 
set apart men ; they are " holy men." 
Every now and then we see a fireman's parade. 
It is a splendid body. Many of the men work 
at their trades or craft, only they are ready 
for emergencies; they are trained. At the 
sound of a bell they become soldiers against 
the flames. They are set apart. They are 
" holy men." That is Paul's idea of a Chris- 
tian man — a trained man; a ready man; a 
minuteman. In any and every call where 
truth and right are in danger, he is to spring 
into the thick of the fight. Like the knight 
of old, he is to ride abroad " redressing human 
wrong." The cry of a woman in distress, or a 
little child, or of hunger, or sorrow, or of 
shame, A\dll thrill him like a trumpet's blast. 
He is a picked man. We can count on his vote ; 
[ 149] 



on his voice; on his prayer; on his service; 
on his loyalty to Christ and Christian things. 
Wherever duty calls, and conscience calls, and 
humanity calls, and God calls there is no fal- 
tering — ^he will fall into his place. 

^^ Forward the Light Brigade! 
Was there a man dismayed? 
No, though the soldiers knew 

Someone had blundered: 
Theirs not to make reply, 
Theirs not to reason why, 
Theirs hut to do and die. 
Into the valley of death 

Rode the Six Hundred!" 

So men followed the flag. So men died for the 
Queen. So shall we not follow the Christ.'^ So 
shall we not live for the King? 
The programme goes on. The Christian life is 
service " acceptable unto God " — " dedicated 
unto God " is the way we would express it. 
Is there anything modern life needs so much 
as this dedication unto the Divine.? 
Our city — its supreme need is not better 
streets, and more factories, and finer homes, 
[150] 



I^rogtamme of ti^e Ci^ri^tfan life 

but men for citizens and rulers whose God is 
the Lord. Men there are all about us, whose 
lives are dedicated to gain, and ambition, 
and commerce, and learning ; but " they who 
build the city labor in vain except the Lord 
build it." 

Our country — ^have we not heard a states- 
man in our own time declare that " the puri- 
fication of politics is an iridescent dream and 
the Decalogue has no place in a political 
platform " ? The crying need of the hour, 
and for our political life, is for men like 
Benjamin Franklin, who in a company of 
lawmakers said, " The longer I live, the more 
clearly I see there is a God who governs in 
the affairs of nations as well as individuals." 
And he made a motion that Congress should 
bow in prayer. 

A man is a Christian in nothing unless he is 
a Christian in everything. Consecration is our 
name for some bowing of the head, or moment 
of silent prayer. Consecration ! Cease to pray 
for it! There is no such thing! It is a mere 
word; and a word is a breath. Make it con- 
[151] 



Crete. Consecrate a hand; a voice; a pocket; 
a day — that is the Christian programme. 
Our fathers blazed the way. They said, " God 
is so good, and it is so sweet to dwell in His 
house ! Let us, in the middle of the week, take 
an hour from business, or pleasure, or rest, 
and let us give the hour wholly to God. We 
will pray, if He puts prayer in our hearts. 
We will sing, if our joy is set to music. We 
will speak, if there is a message given unto 
us. We will keep silent, if the command is, " Be 
still, and know that I am God." The prayer- 
meeting is a Feast of Dedication. Only a few 
Christians out of every church meet at that 
table. The others say, " I pray thee, have me 
excused. I have married a wife ; I have bought 
a farm; I have made an investment." Others 
say, "I do not enjoy the prayer-meeting — it 
is not entertaining." Consecration does not ask 
to be paid. It does not think that duty should 
be sugar-coated. It does not expect to be 
tickled. Duty faithfully done always turns to 
privilege. Work is drudgery until it becomes 
art, and art is joy. Even before that time 
[ 152 ] 



I^rogramme of tl^e Cl^rtjsttan titt 

comes there is good in it. To be in our place 
at the mid-week service is going to drill. It 
is touching elbows with our fellows. When the 
battle comes, men left alone will run away ; 
but if they touch elbows they will capture a 
battery. There is strength in numbers. There 
is fire in a bundle of sticks. Going to the 
prayer-meeting generates momentum. It cre- 
ates esprit du corps. It organizes for victory. 
Wise is the Christian man who spends one 
hour in the week in consecration to God. 
Our fathers were busy men. They did not 
travel as fast as we do, but they carried heav- 
ier loads. They subdued the forest, and tamed 
the wilderness, and laid the foundations of 
city, and school, and state. When Sunday 
came, they were just as weary as we are. 
When they were tempted to rest, they remem- 
bered that childhood is the strategic hour of 
all life. Destiny hinges on the first ten golden 
years. Then the young life is like clay in the 
hands of the potter. You can write on it what 
you like, and as it hardens, your message is 
indeHble. So they organized their children and 
[153] 



their neighbors' children into classes on Sun- 
day, and taught them religion. Methods may 
change, but the Sunday-school lives on. It is 
more of a necessity than it used to be. For 
religion neglected has slipped away from the 
home, and she has been driven out of public 
schools. It is the only hour in the week when 
our children can learn the word of God and 
the deep things of the soul. But how can the 
Sunday-school teach the children without 
teachers.^ " Oh," you say, " I am so weary — 
do not ask me." " I do not feel competent — 
do not ask me." " I do not know enough about 
the Bible — do not ask me." 
Are you any more weary than John Wana- 
maker, and other great captains of industry, 
who give their Sundays to childhood ? Are you 
any more tired than the public-school teacher, 
who has taught children all the week, or the 
clerk, whose hours are longer than yours, or 
the little mother, who works all day and 
watches half the night.? You fathers and 
mothers are not competent.? Then who is to 
teach your children and your neighbors' chil- 
[ 154 ] 



programme of ti^e Cl^rijstian Life 

dren? You do not know the Bible well 
enough? Then is it not high time that you 
began to study and learn the great Book? I 
speak it in love, but I speak the truth, when 
I say that the Sunday-schools of to-day are 
suffering deeply because of the indifference, 
the carelessness, not to say laziness, of Chris- 
tian people. I do not think I have ever heard 
anything that threw so much light upon the 
secret of his power than when his friend has 
told us that, all through Harvard, Theodore 
Roosevelt taught a Sunday-school class. He 
did not mind what church it was in. When he 
was over-strenuous for the staid ceremonies 
of the High Church, he parted from it with- 
out anger, and went into another church. In 
that act of consecration I see the budding of 
his fame. Whether he was cowboy, author, 
police commissioner. President, or Christian, 
he was in earnest. Consecration is conquest. 
It is hard for most of us to consecrate our 
money to God. The conservatism of Chris- 
tians in giving unto the Lord is the discour- 
agement to men who study it. How few men 
[155] 



a ^oirng iHan'0 Eeltgton 

give unto self-denial. A good Jew, three 
thousand years ago, gave one-tenth of his in- 
come to God. When will the church, that calls 
itself after Christ, reach the standard of the 
Jew? When men are asked to give, they fig- 
ure how little — not how much. We often meet 
the man who says, " I cannot afford to go 
to church, because there is always a call for 
money. Salvation used to be free.'' 
Was salvation free when Jesus and the 
apostles lived, and suffered, and went home- 
less, and died for men.? Was salvation free 
when Luther, and Calvin, and Wesley 
turned their backs on ease, and safety, and 
plenty, and chose the path of persecution and 
poverty.? Was salvation free when our 
fathers crossed the sea, giving up home, and 
fatherland, and choosing the wilderness, that 
their children might have the Kingdom of 
God.? "WTierever men have had liberty, and 
learning, and privilege, and religion, have not 
other men died and given it to them.? And 
what do churches want with money.? Is dt 
not for alms, and teachers, and healing, 
[156] 



progmmmc of ti^e Ci^tiisttan life 

and uplifting of men, and women, and little 
children ? 

God is here ! He is calling. He has been to the 
home of your neighbor and laid his hand on 
the eldest boy — the pride of the household — 
and said unto him, " Come away from all this 
and preach the gospel to the poor. Take 
neither two coats, but only thy staff.'* And lo ! 
he is yonder among the cannibals, like Chal- 
mers. He is yonder among the lepers, like 
Damien of Molokai. He is yonder, like Liv- 
ingstone, in the jungles of Africa. He is in 
the purlieus of the great city, like Booth and 
Graham Taylor. He is out yonder on the 
frontier, like Whitman or Kingsbury. All 
these, like the Master, " have nowhere to lay 
their heads," nor will they have, until, like 
their Master, they borrow some tomb in which 
to sleep on the hillside. That is the consecra- 
tion God has asked of your neighbor's child. 
Now He comes to you, and He says, " I have 
given you stewardship in the world of trade. 
I have not asked for your child ; let him grow 
up in the home love, in the home land, in 
[157] 



the home hfe. Of you, I ask the food and 
the medicine for those who are on the firing 
line." 

And this appeal shall not go unheeded. Every 
man has the heroic in him and promptings to 
be great, " Here am I, send me," is the cry of 
Isaiah. He had always passed for a courtier, 
but that splendid consecration made him a 
prophet. " Here am I, use me," and it is the 
proud descendant of seven earls who, with 
person, position, and pocket, becomes both 
tribune and almoner for the poor and dis- 
tressed. By a life dedicated to God's poor and 
Christ's little ones, he made the name of 
Shaftesbury to shine forever and ever as a 
star. " Take me, or take mine," say men on 
every side, and like the widow of old, they 
give their mite or their much unto the work of 
God. There never was a time since the world 
began when there was so much service, so 
much care for others, so much giving till it 
hurts, as there is to-day. It is like the dawn of 
summer. Every young man must surely feel 
this touch and thrill of his time. " I beseech 
[158] 



^togramme of ti^e €\)ti^tian iLife 

you, by the mercies of God, that you present 
your bodies a living sacrifice unto God. It is 
your reasonable service." 

But the word sacrifice hath in it a yet still 
sterner meaning. Modern preaching is some- 
times criticised for leaving out the cross of 
Christ. It is a true accusation, and not against 
preaching only, but against all modern life. 
We have left the cross out of life, and it may 
not be. 

In the woods, I have seen the animal 
mother — brute though she be — lay down her 
strength, even unto death, for the sake of her 
helpless babe. In the fields, no bud unfolds into 
a flower, no corn grows on the stalk, save some- 
thing dies. From the cabin of the pioneer, 
from the hut of the miner and the tenement of 
the poor, God leads forth now and again a 
great man; but into the world he always 
comes through some gateway of great denial. 
Well did Frances Willard, as she remembered 
the hard life of the Wisconsin farm, call her 
mother, " St. Courageous." Well did Na- 
poleon call the mothers of France " the 
[159] 



martyrs of France." Motherhood is a living 
martyrdom. " Every babe that is born is at a 
woman's peril, and every man that dies leaves 
a broken heart." You cannot rule the cross 
out of either life or religion. To leave the 
cross of Christ out of our words is bad; to 
leave it out of our lives is fatal. Without the 
cross, Jesus was but a gentleman; without 
the cross of sacrifice, Christianity is but an 
ethical culture. 

In one of her best books Mrs. Phelps Ward 
tells us of the conventional church life in a 
cultured town. The church held in its fellow- 
ship the good, and respectable, and fashion- 
able. Life went on in it genteelly and without 
a ripple. At last this church called a young 
minister. The council refused him ordina- 
tion because he was not as sure of the Last 
Things as the old dry-as-dust preachers were. 
Turned out by his own cultured people, 
Emanuel Bayard turned to the outcasts of 
the town — ^the fisher folk, the drunkard, and 
the harlot. They hated ministers. They had 
not been inside of a church for years. They 
[160] 



I^rogramme of tl^e Cl^tigitian life 

would not listen to any sermon, however 
eloquent. 

He found a man drunk and beating his wife. 
He knocked the wife-beater down, and then 
went home with the drunkard, and living with 
him like a brother redeemed him from his 
cups. He sought out a Magdalen in her house 
of sin, and took her to a decent house, Avalk- 
ing by her $ide up the main street of the town 
at midnight, and, as in the olden time, this 
woman, taken in her sin, fell sobbing at the 
feet of the preacher, melted to the heart by 
the fact that he cared for her soul, and for 
her sake endured the shame and byword of 
the scoffer. 

A ship went to pieces on the rocks. The sea 
was so rough that not a single lifeboat could 
live on it. Not even an old sailor dared breast 
the waves. This frail minister, girding him- 
self with a rope, despite the warnings and 
entreaty of his seagoing people, plunged into 
the storm and brought back two men alive. 
After that the sailor folk called him a minister, 
and clave unto him as sheep follow a shepherd. 
[161] 



•a poung jman'0 meltgion 

He, by inheritance, was a child of wealth — his 
fortune went to uplift the fallen and he lived 
with the very poor. He loved unto madness a 
beautiful woman of culture and position, but, 
like his Master, turned his back on earth's 
holy joy, because so mean was his life that 
none could be asked to share it. 
It was August, and the churches were closed 
or empty. This man said he would preach. The 
multitudes gathered as of old. There were a 
thousand there, besides the women and chil- 
dren. All was noise and confusion. The 
preacher appeared, and, as by magic, all was 
still and orderly. " Was it magic, or miracle ? 
Was it holiness, or eloquence? Did* he speak 
with the tongue of men or angels ? Not a man 
moved. Not a soul but was rapt as if they 
heard the heavens speak. The thousands were 
as gentle as one. This sermon seemed more 
the cry of a spirit there in the shadows than 
a man. It plead as no man ever plead who had 
not first forgotten himself in self-denial and 
remembered the love of the great God. Fisher- 
men, with one foot on the sand and the other 
[162] 



iarogmmme of ti^e Ci^rijsttan Life 

on their stranded dories, stood like men afraid 
to stir. The upHfted eyes of the throng took 
on a look of awe. It grew darker, and when 
no man could more see his face they knew he 
was praying for their souls. Some fell on their 
knees, while the heads of others got no farther 
than their guilty breasts, where they hung like 
children. The sound of stifled sobbing mingled 
with the waves." Italian laborers cried, " Be- 
hold ! there is the Christman ! " From that 
night many dated the beginning of new lives. 
What was the secret .f^ May it not have been 
that they loved the preacher that first loved 
them.^ It is the all-secret of Christ, and is yet 
omnipotent over rude men. I will not tell 
the story further. I care not that at last 
Emanuel Bayard, in that village, suffered 
martyrdom, and died at the hands of hate 
and persecution. I do care to know that the 
sacrifice lifted many into newness of life. The 
cross of Christ, in the life of any one of His 
children, hath power yet to redeem people 
from their sins. There is no Christ life without 
sacrifice. With Paul I cry to-day^ " I beseech 
[163] 



you to present your bodies a living sacrifice, 
for it is your reasonable service." The Chris- 
tian man is to be the Christman ! 
To be a Christian, then, is hard work. It is 
loss of ease, and it is at cost of sacrifice. Why 
should men take up the cross and be crucified ? 
Why does Paul urge this hard life upon his 
friends and upon his dear children of the 
gospel ? We must have reasons. Men are borne 
away by motives, as wind carries seed over 
distant seas. Great nations are all the children 
of great motives. So David Swing says, " In- 
dividuals are led on, not by the steeds which 
draw the sun, nor by lines that draw the car 
of the conqueror, but by motives, decisive and 
powerful." 

What are the motives for this Christian hfe.'^ 
How can you impel me to it ? Paul calls it " a 
reasonable service," but he means more than 
logic when he uses that word " reasonable." 
Logic is bloodless. Men do not die for an 
Ergo. It is not enough to light the brain. To 
make men deny themselves, you must warm 
the heart. Reason is not enough. 
[164] 



latogtamme of ti^e Ci^rijstian life 

Another great motive is fear. The old-time 
preacher dwelt much on this motive. To be a 
Christian was to " flee from the wrath to 
come." Better were it for us, I think, to have 
some of this old-time fear of punishment. 
There is something in God to fear. I know 
there is in this world, and I believe there is in 
another world. " The wages of sin is death," 
in field, in herd, in nation, in home, and in 
soul. 

But Paul does not appeal to men's fear. He 
has a higher motive. " Perfect love casteth out 
fear." Paul knew love and wrote its classic. 
He ran his finger through all the vocabulary 
of rich speech, and selected out three words 
and put them down. The first word he put 
down was Faith — " And by faith were the 
worlds made." The second word he set down 
was Hope — " And by hope are we saved." 
The third word he set down was Love — " And 
the greatest of these is love." 
Read the greatest poem in the world, and I 
know its author — Love wrote it. Give me the 
sweetest music in the world, and I know its 
[ 165 ] 



author — Love sang it. Find me the most 
splendid home standing upon the earth, and 
I know its architect — Love built it. Read me 
tales of war and daring, and pick out the 
finest part of heroism, and I know before you 
tell me that Love dared and bled and died — 
" Love never faileth." And God is Love. 
Why doesn't Paul appeal to us, then, to en- 
gage in Christian service by the love of God.f^ 
That is what John lived to be a hundred years 
old to preach, and he grew beautiful as he told 
it to men. That is what Henry Ward Beecher 
proclaimed with master eloquence, and the old 
cruel Calvinism melted out of our theology 
like the frost when the spring has come. That 
is what Phillips Brooks preached, when the 
heart of New England was stirred and swept 
by sympathy and kindling emotion, as the 
leaves of the forest are stirred by the breath 
of the south wind. Why did not Paul say, " I 
beseech you, by the love of God, to present 
your bodies as living sacrifice unto God " ? 
Because that would have been short of the 
truth. To say that God loves us is not enough. 
[166] 



I^rogtamme of t\^t €\)n^tian tift 

God ought to love us. We are His children and 
we have a right to His providence, and to His 
care, and to His love. If He did not love us. 
He would be less than man. Sometimes love is 
expected, and may be demanded. We count it 
not a virtue for a human father to feed his 
children and clothe them — it is his obligation. 
God began us, and He is in duty bound to pro- 
vide for us and to love us. 
But even love hath its heights. Love may go 
beyond its obligations. You and I have seen 
that and will never cease to wonder. Here in a 
book we read a bad man loves a good woman. 
It is hopeless, for she is already pledged to 
another man. His love for her makes him 
honest, and sober, and true — that much she 
had a right to expect. But when in an hour of 
calamity her husband is doomed to die, and 
this man voluntarily comes by night, and by 
stealth gains his prison cell, and goes out to 
meet death with a smile, in his stead, we know^ 
that love has more than paid its debt. It has 
become heroic. 

We read in the New Testament that Jesus wg,s 
[167] 



a man of love. He gives not blow for blow, nor 
curse for curse. He never tries to blast His 
enemies. That much we have a right to expect. 
It is love's price. But when, in the hour of His 
martyrdom, He forgets His own pain to plead 
and pray that his Father may spare His 
enemies, He outdoes love. There we see love has 
become a martyr. 

You and I turn back the pages of our child- 
hood. We see that our father and mother fed 
and clothed us and housed us — it was their 
obligation. By dint of striving and sacrifice 
and self-denial they gave us opportunity of 
education. We are awed by their love, when we 
see what it cost them, but still it was a part of 
their obligation. A hundred times while we are 
yet with them, and since we have gone away 
from them and left them to live our own lives, 
we have failed, and fallen, and disappointed 
them. Our enemies have jeered us, and the 
world condemned us, and even friends have 
fallen away from us. But whatever our 
failure, the love of the home folk has never 
given cut. Father sold his farm and gave 
[168] 



programme of ti^e ci^ttjsttan life 

his last dollar to save us from ruin and 
bankruptcy. 

It may have been worse than that. We may 
have violated the laws of the State ; we may 
have been condemned by a jury of our peers; 
we may have been sent to State prison, or to 
the scaffold. But no man yet ever went to the 
prison cell or the scaffold attended only by 
the jailer, the hangman, and the priest. Right 
along by his side, with weeping eyes and 
breaking heart, but with arms about him, 
clinging to him to the last, there walked an 
old man, or maybe a woman v/ith a faded face. 
And even while stern men were reading the 
death-warrant, these were talking through 
their tears, and they were appealing unto 
God, and their words were, " O Father, Thou 
knowest our hearts, and once a child always 
a child. He may be lost to others, but he can 
never be lost to us and to Thee. There is yet 
good in him. O Father Divine, it was our 
fault in part he fell. It is we who have failed. 
Lay it not to his charge; and give him yet 
one more chance." What is that? Love? It is 
[169] 



more than love. It is love in martyrdom. It is 
love become heroic ! 

When love becomes heroic, it has a new name, 
and that name is mercy. Love in martyrdom is 
mercy. Love in sacrifice is mercy. Love, that is 
undeserved, and unexpected, and unmerited, is 
always mercy. 

And now at last there is let loose a motive that 
sweeps the heart, as the wind sweeps the sea. 
It is like a gale. I think it would drive every- 
thing before it. I have received mercies from 
men. I am thinking of my father, who some- 
times failed to be just because he was kind. I 
am thinking of my mother, who for love's sake 
saved others, but herself she could not save. I 
am thinking of loved ones who for harshness 
gave me kindness, who for roughness gave me 
gentleness, who for coldness gave me sym- 
pathy, who for impatience gave me patience, 
and who for selfishness gave me self-denial. 
Only the angels of God knew it. 
I am borne away by these memories of un- 
deserved ministrations of love, and I call back 
[170] 



programme of tl^e Ci^rtgittan life 

to those friends, both dead and living, " Oh, 
dear friends, you have bound me to goodness 
forever." 

But man's kindness is but a Httle thing as 
compared with God's. Like the tiny rivulet to 
the sea is man's generosity as compared with 
God's generosity. We have been undeserving, 
and yet He has not been stingy. We have been 
forgetful, but He has not slumbered nor slept. 
We have been unfilial, and yet He has given 
us love that has never been clouded nor ceased 
to shine. How many times has He been merci- 
ful.^ I do not know; I cannot even think. A 
thousand fell at my side, but it did not come 
nigh me. " There was the destruction that 
wasted at noonday; there was the pestilence 
that walketh in darkness," and yet I went un- 
scathed. " The soul that sinneth, it shall die " 
— I have sinned, and yet I have not died. He 
hath relented. He let the lifted thunder drop ! 
Oh, the mercies of God are over us and around 
us, as the sky and stars are over and around 
the earth. We cannot count them, " for in 
[171] 



a goung jman'js BeKgton 

number they are more than the sands of the 
sea." " By the mercies of God, I beseech you to 
present your bodies a Hving sacrifice, holy, ac- 
ceptable unto God, which is your reasonable 



[172] 



Ci^e Eeagent for €t^vi^tian 
€^avacttv 



[173] 



And ah! for a man to arise in me, 
That the man I am may cease to be. 

Tennyson's ''Maud." 

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I 
say unto thee. Except a man be born anew, he cannot 
see the Kingdom of God. 

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born 
of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the King- 
dom of God. 

That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which 
is born of the spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said 
unto thee. Ye must be born anew. The wind bloweth 
where it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but 
knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth : so 
is every one that is born of the Spirit. 

John 3 : 3-8. 

/ go to the drunkard and say, '^ Cease your cup, change 
your company, and though I do not promise that to-day 
or to-morrow you shall be rid of the fiery devil, I say that 
in this way lies salvation,'^ I say to him, " You must 
be born again ;'^ and not only that, I say, ^'You may.'' 
^^ But," says he, '^ I have drank away all my friends, 
all my property, all my health; you tell me I must be 
born again : but I know that I am going to be damned ; 
and whether the time is a little longer or a little shorter, I 
don't care." But I say to him, ^^You may be born 
again." What is that worth to him? It is worth his 
recovery, his restoration to health, and to friendship and 
to prosperity. And I say to every intemperate man, to 
every lustful man, to every man who has gone over into 
the slough of passion and of evil-doing, '^ Not only must 
you, but you may be born again. The wheels can turn 
backward as well as forward; and you may be recovered. 
There is hope for all" 

Henry Ward Beecher. 



i 174 ] 



CHAPTER SIX 



Cl^e ISeagent for Ci^rtjstfan 
€})avacttt 







CHARACTER is the cur- 
rency of the Kingdom of 
God. There are counter- 
feits : but the counterfeit is 
certificate of the genuine. 
Hypocrites prove the ex- 



istence of good men. 

The history of character is Hke the history 
of money — men try to inflate it. We are all 
familiar with the " greenback movement." It 
was an efl'ort to make men rich by stamping 
a piece of paper with a dollar-mark. It was 
like a man's paying his debts with notes of 
hand. People will take them so long as back 
of them are securities in the bank vault, and 
not a minute longer. 

People will take greenbacks of the Govern- 
ment just as long as they certify to gold in 
the vault, but when the gold gives out with 
[175] 



its intrinsic value, the greenbacks are nothing. 
Strange to say, there has been a " greenback 
craze " in the Christian church. For centuries 
and centuries both Romanists and Protestants 
have taught the world that a man entered 
heaven, not because of what he did, nor yet 
because of what he was, but because of what 
he believed ; or because of the cross with which 
he was signed ; or the creed which he said. The 
teaching was that if a man would submit him- 
self to a priest, or a creed, then not for any 
worth of his own, but through the merits of 
Another, he would be treated as though he 
were of worth. The teaching of imputed right- 
eousness is the " greenback " heresy in the 
Christian church. It is dead now, but it has 
done great mischief in shaking the confidence 
of men in the church and in the religion of the 
church. No, whether it is in money, or in char- 
acter, fiat value is no value at all. It is with 
men, as with money, they are at last measured 
by their intrinsic worth. 

We are more familiar with the " free silver 

movement.'' It was an attempt to make the 

[176] 



Beagent fot Ci^rijstian €^avacttt 

nation rich by increasing the bulk of its 
money. Just as though the quantity of silver, 
or gold even, was sufficient to make people 
rich. The reason we call a man rich, who has 
gold or silver, is because that gold and silver 
stands for something. It represents long sacri- 
fice, and long industry, and wisdom, and ser- 
vice and suffering. You might rain gold and 
silver out of the heavens upon a tribe of 
savages, and it would not make them rich. 
The gold plus the struggle and the charac- 
ter of the man, makes him rich. And so in 
the world of character, there is a great move- 
ment in our time to bring in the Kingdom 
of God simply by making bread plenty, and 
multiplying clothes, and easy work, and holi- 
days. We are told that if we could have a 
redistribution of wealth, we would have the 
Kingdom of God. It is all in vain. The King- 
dom of God, in the last analysis, is not the 
Kingdom of clothes, or the Kingdom of pleas- 
ure ; it is the Kingdom of character. Any peo- 
ple have just as much of the Kingdom of God 
as they have virtue. 

[ 177 ] 



a ^oung i^an'jsi ISeltgfon 

It is all in vain for men to try and find a 
short cut into the Kingdom of God. You 
cannot make a man a citizen of that King- 
dom by calling him one, if he is not, or by 
putting on the garb, if he has not the heart. 
The Kingdom of God is character; salvation 
is character ; Christianity is character ; Chris- 
tianity is man-making and man-building. It 
is the taking for raw materials humanity 
as we find it, with all its faults, with all its 
sins, and with all its vices, and transforming 
it into humanity as it should be, with all the 
fulness of the stature of Jesus Christ. The 
heart of Christianity lies in this, that it 
takes the wastes and the refuse of human life 
and transforms it into the wealth of God. 
This is the sure sign of a genius, that he 
can create what ought to be out of what is. 
His miracle lies in this, that he plucks for 
us the flower named the Ideal, and lo ! he has 
grown it out of the old stock called the real. 
Therein lies the fascination of the pioneer. 
He is the man who makes a garden out of 
the wilderness. Men called Chicago the Phoe- 
[178] 



Eeagent for d^njstian Ci^aracter 

nix City, because, like the fallen bird of 
Egypt, she arose out of her ashes more beau- 
tiful than ever. 

Look at the South at the close of the war. 
Once the garden of the world, it had been 
plowed by shell and harrowed by steel, until 
it was the grave of civilization. How poor! 
How stripped ! How bleeding ! It took ten 
dollars to make one cent and five hundred 
dollars to buy a barrel of flour. " I'll give 
you $20,000 for that horse," said a cavalry 
officer to General Gordon. " Not much. I have 
just paid a nigger $1,000 for currying 
him," was the reply. The General tells us 
that it was at that time he paid $1,200 for 
two wool hats, and the dealer threw off* three 
hundred because he took two. Let the elo- 
quent Grady tell the rest: 
" Then it was they sent their war horses to 
the furrow : the waste places were clothed and 
the earth smiled with a harvest. The South- 
ern merchant began business with interest at 
five per cent, per month. The people of At- 
lanta crept out of holes cut like swallows' 
[179] 



a ^oung jHan'js ISeligion 

nests in the hillsides, where they had found 
refuge during the siege, to find ruins. Five 
hundred shanties, as if by magic, were fash- 
ioned from the iron roofing of destroyed 
buildings. In 1866 there were four men in 
Atlanta worth $10,000. In 1886 there were 
six men worth ten millions of dollars. And 
so the story goes all over the South. How 
from chaos and desolation the currents of 
trade trickled, and swelled, and took orderly 
way : How rivers were spanned and the wilder- 
ness pierced with the iron rail : How frugality 
came with misfortune; fortitude with sorrow, 
and with necessity, invention : How the thea- 
tre of the most gigantic war in history, the 
residence of five millions of manumitted 
slaves, in twenty-five years became the home 
of almost twenty millions of free men, the 
home of a people that in swift and amazing 
recuperation have discounted the miracle 
wrought by the French people after the 
Franco-Prussian War — that is the tale of the 
New South." 

Such an achievement, creating wealth out of 
[180] 



aseaijent tot Ci^tijEitian Cl^amcter 

poverty, building prosperity out of desola- 
tion, gathering victory out of defeat, mani- 
fests clearly the genius of the American man. 
The sure mark of all genius is that he can 
create what ought to be out of what is. 
Another thing: Watch any great creative 
genius, and he works his wonders by using 
what other men throw away. 
Every thoughtful student of his kind must 
bemoan the wastefulness of man. You can 
mark the stage of a people's journey away 
from barbarism by its prodigality. The sav- 
age wastes everything he cannot wear and 
eat in one day. He has no property. Civiliza- 
tion is husbandry. We are still civilized only 
in spots. 

Charles Lamb, you remember, tells us that it 
was by accident men discovered " Roast Pig." 
It was a Chinese cottage that was burned 
by a boy's carelessness, and a litter of pigs 
was roasted. In exploring the ruins, the boy 
handled the burned pigs, happened to put his 
soiled hand to his lips, and found out that 
roast pig was good to eat. He told his father, 
[181] 



a Poum JHan'^ Eeltgion 

and the news spread secretly, so that other 
people began to burn down their houses also 
that they and their neighbors might have 
roast pig. It was a rare and expensive deli- 
cacy, and at first unlawful. But at last it 
became general, and a great man came who 
showed them how to build a fire out of chips 
and roast the pig, and still save their house. 
Then the price of roast pig fell, and men 
grew rich on what they saved. 
Forty years ago men wasted one-half of 
the pig when they killed him — bones, bris- 
tles, teeth, offal, eyes, feet, snout, and tail. 
Mr. Armour went to killing pigs for the 
market. He sold his meat like other men, but 
he turned all the waste into lard, and jelly, 
and buttons, and butter, and soup, and co- 
logne. He found a way to market every part 
and particle of a pig. The use of these wastes 
made him a multi-millionnaire, and made 
the youth of Chicago rich with the Institute. 
That is the story of all our wealth. Wealth 
is thrift and civilization is utility. Virginia 
was as rich in Powhatan's day as in JefFer- 
[182] 



Reagent for €^ti^tian Ci^aractet; 

son's. But the savages lived poor in the midst 
of plenty. They let everything go to waste. 
The white man used what the red man threw 
away, and lo ! the white man was rich. 
The farmer utilizes the soil which the hunter 
wastes, and grows rich. The lumberman util- 
izes the logs which the farmer burns, and 
he is made rich. The tanner utilizes the bark 
which the lumberman wastes, and he is made 
rich. The pulp mill man uses the branches 
and tops which the tanner leaves, and he is 
made rich. The miner comes along and digs 
the coal which none of them saw, and he is 
made rich. The coke man comes and saves 
the gas in the coal, and he is made rich. At 
last the gas man comes and takes the odor 
which the coke man wastes, and dilutes it with 
water and sells it for light, and that odor 
mixed with water makes him a millionnaire. 
Most great fortunes have been made by sav- 
ing what other men have thrown away. 
The man who shows us how to utilize the 
wastes of the world is a benefactor. He shows 
us how to utilize the wandering winds, and 
[183] 



a goung jEan'jS meltgion 

the ship has come, and the ocean is a high- 
way. He shows us how to utilize steam, and 
the railroad has come, binding together dis- 
tant lands with links of steel. He shows us 
how to utilize the wasted power of the idly 
flowing river, and our corn is ground, and 
our wheat made into flour. He shows us how 
to utilize the waste force of electricity, and 
we have wings for our voice, and we have 
light for our nights. What we call civiliza- 
tion is the learning to use what the barbarian 
wastes. The waste of the world is the wealth 
of the world. 

It is easy for us to see this same principle in 
the world of knowledge. It is a matter of 
common remark nowadays that " of the 
making of books there is no end." Magazines 
have multiplied beyond our ability to count. 
It has not always been so. Only a few cen- 
turies ago there were but a few score of books 
in the world, and each one of them was worth 
a small fortune. There were only two or three 
subjects on which men ever wrote books. 
Nowadays, books are written about every con- 
[184] 



Beagent fot Ci^rijstian Character 

ceivable subject. Then only one man out of 
a century was a writer; to-day every small 
town has its author. Once there were but few 
schools, and they were open only to the sons 
of the rich ; to-day State declares that every 
child has as much right to schooling as 
to fresh air. Once it was a great distinc- 
tion to be a scholar. Even in the days of our 
forefathers, a family was thought to be for- 
tunate if it should have one scholar out of 
its number. In those days also every family 
was expected to have at least one dunce. Now- 
adays every child has a chance to be a scholar ; 
and the dunce is often found out to be one 
needing only special training to be the wisest 
of all. Men like Horace Mann have taught 
us how to utilize the educational wastes of 
society. And all our libraries, and laboratories, 
and literature, and books, have come about 
because we have worked the ledge of learn- 
ing that is in every human breast. The waste 
of the old-time educational world to-day 
makes up the wealth of modern culture. 
The difference between the old ideas of goV' 
[185] 



a goung iWian'0 Eeltgion 

ernment and our modern notions lies wrapped 
up in this: we have learned to utilize the 
waste of the old-time state. In the drama of 
Julius Caesar, Shakespeare has given us a pic- 
ture of the old-time state. There was in Rome 
but one only man and his name was Caesar. 
There were some Senators, but they were pup- 
pets. There were some freemen, but only so 
in name. The most were slaves. Caesar was all 
in all. He makes the dissatisfied Cassius say: 

*' Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world 
Like a Colossus, and we petty men 
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about 
To find ourselves dishonorable graves. 

Now, in the names of all the gods at once, 
Upon what meat doth this our Ccesar feed, 
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art 

shamed ! 
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble 

bloods ! 
When went there by an age, since the great 

flood, 
But it was famed with more than with one 

wxin? 

[ 186 ] 



ISeagent for Cl^riiStian Ci^aracter 

When could they say till noWj that taWd 

of Rome, 
That her wide walls encompassed hut one 

man? 
Now is it Rome indeed^ and room enough 
When there is in it hut one only man.'' 

When feudalism came in Europe it was dark 
and bloody, but it left behind this lasting 
good — it gave the world a nobility. And the 
world was better with many masters than one. 
Feudalism turned a tiny bit of the universal 
waste into men. 

When feudalism could do no more, the guilds 
and the maritime cities came. Their history 
is one of quarrel and bloodshed; But their 
leaders in commerce went into statecraft, and 
there sprang up limited monarchies, and 
Houses of Parliament, and a great middle 
class — intelligent, and brave, and free. More 
of the waste political forces had been utilized ; 
and law, and liberty, and justice, and right 
were written never to be erased, from men's 
political Bible. 

Then our fathers came, and by dint of cour- 
[187] 



a goung jHan'icj Beltgton 

age, and light of faith, they proclaimed to 
the world, and made their word good with 
their swords, every man is a possible King, a 
ruler in disguise, and has the power to gov- 
ern himself. Eighty years later their grand- 
children saw that the truth applied to their 
black legions of industry: and freeing their 
slaves gave to the world its first real Democ- 
racy. For a Democracy is only the use of 
political forces that Kings and nobles had 
wasted. In politics even the waste is the wealth 
of the world. 

Christ applied this method to religion. This 
is his distinguishing mark as a spiritual 
leader. Anybody can dream of a Kingdom of 
God. Bellamy can, the Socialist can. But 
who can out of the given material realize it? 
It would be easy enough to make a kingdom 
of God, if one could cause it to spring, like 
Atlantis, full grown and perfect, out of the 
midst of the sea. It were not hard to make 
Eden a Paradise. It was all new and the peo- 
ple were made to order. Plato dreamed, and 
it was only a dream. Augustine dreamed; 
[188] 



iSeagcnt for €\^vi^tian €^atacttt 

Bacon dreamed ; Sir Thomas More dreamed ; 
Brook Farm dreamed; Jesus accomplished. 
The doctrinaire can save the world with ideal 
conditions and ideal materials. The Saviour 
saves the world in present conditions and by 
use of actual materials. 

He began to look about Him for his materials. 
He wanted prophets — " There had been no 
vision for four hundred years." He wanted 
preachers — Oratory was a lost art. He wanted 
Apostles — The Pharisees held the chief places 
in every synagogue and they were " whitened 
sepulchres." He wanted citizens of His heav- 
enly Kingdom — and lo ! there were the mate- 
rialistic Sadducees, the time-serving Herodi- 
ans, the miserly Publicans, a few desperate 
men dreaming of revolution rather than 
righteousness, and as for the people, sordid, 
suffering, stumbling, sinning, they were as 
sheep without a shepherd. 
But He set to with the materials at hand. He 
proposed to bring in the Kingdom of God by 
utilizing the moral and spiritual waste about 
Him. See what He did. 

[189] 



Out of all the influential classes, not one fol- 
lowed Jesus openly, while He was yet alive. 
Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea needed 
His martyrdom to make them declare their 
allegiance. Paul, the first scholar of the 
church, did not come till afterward. In the 
very beginning of his ministry Jesus went 
to Jerusalem. He spoke in the Temple-porch 
before He preached in the synagogue, where 
He was brought up. Few besides Galileans ever 
followed Him ; and they were rustics. He was 
compelled to build His Kingdom out of the 
lowly. 

The Spaniards wanted to be rich. They sent 
forth armies to conquer and spoil the new 
world. They destroyed themselves and left the 
new world a wilderness and desolation. The 
Anglo-Saxon wanted wealth. He, too, sent 
forth an army into the new world. It was an 
army of industry, with axe, and plow, and 
sickle. They waxed mighty, and they changed 
the waste places of the earth into gardens, 
and made the desert to blossom as the rose. 
Other teachers have sought to bring in the 
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Eeagent for Ci^rijsttan Cl^aracter 

Kingdom of God by selection. Only the House 
of Aaron were to be priests. Only the Jews 
were the people of God. Only the elect would 
be saved. Only the good would be taken. 
That was not the method of Jesus. He, too, 
proposes to build the Kingdom. But regen- 
eration, not election, is His method. He will 
make His kingdom rich out of the wastes of 
society. 

We saw whence came His teachers. Look at 
the citizens of His Kingdom. They were still 
more unpromising. In Rome, literary men 
made no mention of the Christian church. It 
was beneath their notice. The historian dis- 
missed it as a superstition among slaves. In 
Jerusalem, the priests despised it as heretical, 
ignorant, and dangerous, only because of its 
rabble. Herod watched it lest it might be 
revolutionary. But the publican penitently 
took Christ's offer of fellowship. The dying 
thief gladly seized His outstretched hand. 
The lepers kneeled before Him. The harlot's 
heart broke when there came a teacher with 
sympathy and hope for her. The common 
[191] 



a goung jman'jsi Eeltgion 

people heard Him gladly. Jesus built the 
Kingdom of God out of the refuse and waste 
of society. 

This is the imperial truth of Christianity, 
and we have need in our day to emphasize it. 
The church of our time is too much on the 
defensive. It seems to be making an apology 
and begging for the mere boon of existence. 
There is no place where the wastes of society 
are so awful as in the great city, and it is 
just where the church is most in despair. 
Listen to the voices crying in the night. 
They sound like human beings in distress. 
The one voice tells about the moral wreckage 
of our cities. Here are our slums, where lit- 
tle children are born with the taint of riioral 
leprosy on them from the cradle. Here are our 
prisons, and they are teeming with life. Our 
children's courts hear a story every day that 
will break your heart. All through the cold 
Winter there is heard little children crying 
from cold, and all the years through they 
die for want of bread. Babies are dying for 
fresh air. Mothers kill their own children 
[192] 



iseagent for Ci^njsttan €\^amttn 

because they cannot feed them. Everywhere 
there is drunkenness and crime. Every night 
vice holds a carnival. Every day greed makes 
merchandise out of the poor. The slum grows 
year by year, and every year the tides of de- 
generacy rise higher and higher. That voice 
telling of our wastes is heart-breaking, and 
is like the voice of Rachel weeping for her 
children. 

The other voice is more quiet. Fear speaks 
softly. Dread does not cry out from the house- 
tops. Its wail is, " What is going to become 
of the Kingdom of God.^ Our Republic is 
not what our fathers dreamed. City govern- 
ment is public robbery. The working people do 
not go to church. Sunday is a holiday more 
than a Holy day. What is going to become of 
the church to-morrow ? Where are we going 
to get our ministers, and our deacons, and our 
Sunday-school superintendents ? Where are 
we going to get enough good people to hold 
up the right .^ How can we get people to go 
to church.? A hundred different remedies are 
being applied. We are opening hospitals; we 
[ 193 ] 



a ^oung jHan'jS EeltgtotT 

are organizing charities; we are opening 
soup houses. Our ministers and our workers 
are running their legs off and fairly scouring 
the tenement houses to find, here and there, 
Bible-reading men, and Sunday-keeping fam- 
ilies, and church-going classes." 
We will never succeed. The day Rome died 
she had more charities than ever before. 
Money is not enough. A full belly and a good 
coat do not make a Christian. The sins of the 
slums, all of them, grow ranker on the boule- 
vard. We have need to remember that the 
genius of Jesus Christ lay in the truth which 
he held — that God does not carry on the 
world simply at last to save out of the ruins 
and wreck of it a few kings, or a few bishops, 
or a few ministers, or a few deacons, or a few 
fine folks. He is not satisfied to gain the re- 
spectable and worth while. He demands more 
than the industrious, and the law-abiding, and 
the church-going, and the home-loving peo- 
ple. God's Kingdom is in all and over all. 
His wealth comes because He gathers up the 
broken pieces ; He has come to seek and to save 
[ 194] 



Reagent for Ci^njsttan Ci^atacter 

the lost. He is after the sheep on the moun- 
tain; the coin that is lost; the prodigal and 
the fallen. He means to have the mining 
camps and the saloons and the dives and the 
slums. 

" The wicked man shall forsake his ways and 
the unrighteous man his thoughts, and they 
shall return unto God, for He will abundantly 
pardon." The gospel is not sugar to keep 
the good people sweet, nor salt to keep moral 
people from spoiling ; it is the leaven that will 
transfigure and transform and regenerate 
and change the man of sin into the man of 
God. Regeneration is the watchword of the 
Christian Church. " He may be born again," 
is the gospel for the hour. The purpose of 
Jesus is to use the wastes of society, and out 
of them to make up the wealth of the King- 
dom of God. 

This law applies to the individual as well as 
society. For after all society is only a group 
of individuals. And the evils of society are 
only the sins of individual men and women. 
That is a thing we always forget. We think 
[195] 



the bad are all bad, and the good are all 
good. The fact is that the so-called good peo- 
ple, by so much as there is evil in them, help 
to make up the evil of society. And the bad 
people, by so much as there is good in them, 
help make up the good of society. There are 
few that are all good. I never heard of a 
man who was all bad. I think most of us are 
fatalists, when we come to consider our moral 
lives. 

I heard a preacher say the other day : " It 
is easy enough for a man like Mr. Beecher 
to succeed in the ministry, for he was a con- 
summate orator. It is easy enough for a man 
like Dr. Lyman to succeed in the ministry, 
for he was born good, he is another St. John. 
But most of us are neither orators, nor St. 
Johns; and we have a hard time of it.'' I 
have been thinking about that saying ever 
since, and it, to my mind, pictures our atti- 
tude toward our moral attainments. I hear 
people all around me say, " I have a quick 
temper,'' "I have a sharp tongue," " I am 
not a good mixer," " I cannot bear people." 
[196] 



Beagent for €i^ti^tian Ci^atactet 

And we excuse our dispositions, and our self- 
ishness, and our stinginess, and our coldness, 
and our moral unattractiveness, and our 
spiritual poverty, by saying we were made 
that way. I heard a drunkard say, " I am a 
drunkard's son." I heard a bad woman say, 
" I cannot help it, I was made that way." 
Do these excuses excuse? What have we all 
come from.^ If modem science is right, from 
the animal. And all the love we have, and all 
the sympathy, has come to us because the 
Spirit of God has changed the brass of the 
brute into the gold of the man; the animal 
into the spiritual. What we need is to let 
God change other animal qualities into divine 
qualities. The temper that smites like the 
lightning— God can tame it and change it 
into a fiery courage that will carry light into 
dark places. That sharp tongue may be bri- 
dled, and taught to speak words of liquid love. 
That selfishness may be melted into sympathy. 
I know that St. John the Divine was once 
fiery, and bigoted, and hateful. It was when 
he gave himself into the keeping of the 
[197] 



Son of God that he became the man of love. 
And Jesus Christ comes to us, as of old, and 
claims all the waste forces of our lives for 
His service. Let us bring the tiger that is 
left in us, and the wolf that is left in us, and 
the hawk that is left in us, and the porcupine 
that is left in us, unto Him. Let the cruelty 
be changed into kindness, and the treachery 
into friendship, and the fierceness changed 
into gentleness, and the antagonism changed 
into winsomeness. Let God gather up the 
broken fragments of our lives that we may 
become His, all and all, that nothing shall be 
lost. 

And now we come to Christ's great reagent 
for Character. Men who transform the wastes 
of a factory into merchandise, first see what 
other men do not see, — that there is value 
in refuse. Then, by means of some reagent, 
they reduce the valuable, and separate it out 
of the worthless. The process is twofold, 
in the transforming of clay into gold, of ref- 
use into merchandise: First, Seeing value. 
Second, Freeing value. 

[ 198 ] 



Beagent for €\^tWan Ci^amcter 

This is exactly the process of Christ's salva- 
tion of the wastes of society. He sees good 
where men have only found evil; and then 
He supplies strength to enable the good to 
rise out of and triumph over the evil. Con- 
fidence and grace are Christ's reagents of 
Character. 

God's method of building up the divine in 
men is the method of trusting them and help- 
ing them. He takes stock in them. He says 
there is more in men than appears on the out- 
side, or has ever appeared anywhere. When 
He treats them as if they were divine, they 
themselves begin to act divinely. His is the 
ministry of confidence. 

God found a whole race of men and women 
making bricks under the shadow of the Pyra- 
mids. They were property, like cattle to be 
beaten, killed, worked, and sold — that is all 
the world saw. That is what Pharaoh called 
them: and so history wrote them down. God 
appeared in their darkest hours and cried: 
" Behold my chosen people ! They shall be free 
and have the destiny of their own life in their 
[199] 



a ^oung jman'js iSeltgton 

keeping. They shall form a nation, elect their 
own judges, enact their own laws, and select 
their own King." Suffrage? Government.'^ 
What sort of a government will those igno- 
rant slaves make ? Are they fit to rule them- 
selves.'^ No! but God put them at it. He 
trusted them. He called them his own and 
stuck to them, through two thousand years, 
in evil as well as good report. And I ask you 
by the light of all the shining history of the 
Hebrew nation, was God not right in trusting 
them.? By investing confidence in the down- 
trodden, did He not raise them up into his 
best children.? 

God sent forth His Son. Jesus came a preach- 
ing. He met Peter and all the rest — plain, 
untaught, peasants, doomed to slave like 
beasts that perish, while they lived, and to 
be buried on its banks, and forgotten as 
quickly as the waves of their own Galilee. He 
said : " Ye are my disciples. I will give unto 
you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven." 
Was he mad.? So the Romans said. But treated 
like sons of God, and counted on by the 
[200] 



aseagent fot Ci^tijstian Ci^amcter 

purpose and plan of God, see these twelve 
fisher folk become the rulers of the world in 
their own lifetime, and see them stand next 
to Jesus in the temple of history. 
But that is not all. There is no exception to 
the rule. Jesus met others, besides, in his short 
ministry : His brothers who did not believe on 
Him, and the Pharisees, haughty and cold; 
the Sadducees denying the existence of the 
soul, and proclaiming the gospel of despair; 
the outcast ; the robber and murderer ; the 
fallen woman who until His time had received 
nothing softer than a stone, nothing kinder 
than public scorn; the custom-house officer; 
the ignorant and close-fisted tax-collector, 
who was in the public mind in the same odor 
as the saloon-keeper of to-day. These and such 
folk Jesus met, and with them lived his short 
life, and to them brought a message from 
high heaven. What was it.? Denunciation and 
impending doom like John ? Hatred and scorn 
like the old theology .^^ No. " The Kingdom of 
Heaven is within you," is what He said. 
" After that glimpse of the Divine Confi- 
[ 201 ] 



dence, I cannot falter or finally fail. That is 
the truth for which I have long waited. That 
sort of life is what my soul has so long cried 
for. Having felt the trust of God, I will never 
be afraid. I travel through time and bear its 
heavy loads, and will faint under its awful 
sorrows, and on I will go into the twilight, 
and midnight, and pain, but having beheld 
how God looks at my life, it is enough. His 
confidence in me has begun, and please God 
it shall never end.'' So many a weary man 
and heavy-hearted woman have seen and said, 
and then gone to their task or martyrdom 
with a song. 

It is God's way of making men strong — ^make 
other men trust them. So Damon had his 
Pythias, and Dante his Beatrice, and Goethe 
his Schiller, and Cowper his Mrs. Unwin, and 
Wordsworth his Dorothy, and Robert Brown- 
ing his gifted Elizabeth, Ah, when did any 
man ever grow strong or great but that some- 
one took stock in him and believed in him? 
Sir Walter was a sick, tOw-headed boy, diffi- 
dent and timid. On the playground of the 
[ 202 ] 



Ecagent fot €W^tian Ci^aracter 

then bullying school he was in agony, and 
none saw greatness for him. But at last, at 
James Ferguson's house, the lad saw Burns 
in the height of his fame, and Beattie, and 
Adam Smith, and other great ones. Burns 
went to the wall, looked on a picture, read 
an inscription written under it, and asked who 
wrote those tender lines. No one knew. The 
boy whispered the name of the unknown au- 
thor, and Burns patted him on the head and 
said, " You'll be a man, me lad." It was 
Scott's birth hour. He went home and sobbed 
all night for joy. From that day he knew 
Scotland would have another poet — for 
hadn't the greatest Scotchman of all time 
believed in him, and prophesied great things 
for him.'^ 

And Thomas Carlyle, whose carelessness and 
boorishness crushed the choice soul out of 
Jane Welsh, w^ould never have been heard of, 
but for her great inspiring love for him, and 
her trust in his mission, which never in all the 
dark starving time faltered. Jane Welsh's 
love and trust, and Emerson's friendship, 
[203] 



gave the world this last great Puritan 
prophet. 

And Jesus — I have often wondered so much 
about Him. What friends turned the village 
carpenter into the Messiah by simple trust 
in Him.? The poor whom He met and believed 
on Him.'^ His own Mother, who, though she 
could not understand either her own dreams 
for Him, or the strange words of the wise 
men at His cradle, or yet His own stranger 
words and actions in His maturity, when He 
became an itinerant wanderer with nowhere 
to lay His head. Ah! she kept the mysteries 
all treasured safely in her heart, and never 
failed to believe in Him and trust in Him in 
spite of all. 

Was not the brooding and confidence of such 
a mother enough to have hatched the Divine 
out of a man ? Or is Lew Wallace right when 
he speaks gentle words of another Mary, 
whose home was the cottage of Lazarus, who 
saw in the eyes of the Divine Man the light 
that has melted many another woman's true 
heart as it has shone from a true man's face.? 
[ 204 ] 



Beagcnt fot Ci^rijitian Cl^aractet 

But as a means of saving men, I call atten- 
tion to confidence as reagent of character. 
If an age of criticism is barren, and hath no 
great soul; if, like the corn, human achieve- 
ment grows only in an atmosphere of love, 
and understanding, and appreciation, then 
how shall we begin to make the world better 
and uplift men around us? 
The usual way is to find fault with men and 
point out their sins. The modern newspaper 
uses gall for ink, and pictures only evil. No 
daily paper will print the good things about 
a man ; that does not make head-lines. It says 
in its haste, " All men are hars.'' All this 
infects the age with a spirit of denuncia- 
tion. Let us beware of the fault-finder. It 
was not Christ's way. Men will become what 
you expect of them. Call a man a thief, 
and at last he will steal. Call him an honest 
man, and he will Uve up to his reputation. 
Love and trust are the great reagents for 
character. 

Sydney Carton was a hack barrister, a drunk- 
ard, a peddler of evidence in a corrupt court 
[ 205 ] 



of English law, a debauchee, an outcast man. 
He was treated kindly by an old doctor, and 
trusted by Lucie, his daughter. Where is there 
a wretch with soul so dead, that trusted by 
a pure girl he will not become pure with 
her? He loved her, but renounced all hopes for 
another man. He went from her presence, 
baptized with a new heroism, for she told 
him she believed in him, and would forever be 
his true friend. From that hour his life, 
though still wretched, was pure and true and 
ofttimes heroic in caring for the weak and 
poor. Twice or thrice a year he came to Lucie 
Darnay's home, and went away inspired. In 
the darkest days of the Revolution her hus- 
band went to Paris to help an old servant. 
He was seized and doomed to die. Then Car- 
ton came and exchanged places with him, and 
the next day, holding the hand of a tender 
and timid girl riding in the same tumbril to 
the guillotine, and keeping her brave by say- 
ing, " I am the resurrection and the life," 
died like the true hero he was. They said that 
he looked sublime and prophetic. It was be- 
[ 206 ] 



aseagent for €t^vWan Ci^atactcr 

cause one true-hearted woman believed in 
him! 

This ministry of confidence is God's evangel, 
and He hath put it, as an almighty power, 
into our hands. 

All day yesterday, and last year, when you 
were in the storm stress of the business world, 
and you thought of the faces at home, what 
did it do for you ? Ah ! many a man has been 
saved from failure by a woman's trust. Many 
a man has been saved from wrong and suicide 
by a baby's face. Many a friendless young 
man in yonder city, last year, hungry and 
discouraged, has been saved from sin and 
crime and cowardice by the picture of a gray- 
haired woman in yonder country farmhouse 
who every night knelt and told God what had 
been in her heart every waking moment for 
her boy. 

Hate me, if you will; turn from me all for- 
tune and friendship ; hang me, if you must ; 
but there in that old home is one woman's 
heart which will never believe all you say. 
She kissed my face when it was pure, and led 
[207] 



a gouna jHan'js Beligfon 

me smiling and innocent into childhood sleep. 
And when she falls dying, her last breath will 
utter my name and breathe my praise. 
That is the way mothers gird their children 
against failure, and save them when they 
are lost. 

God is like that — the faithful One. God be- 
lieves in you like that. God expects great 
things of you like that. Men do not know 
you; even wife and child suspect not the 
heights of your character. God knows, and 
expects, and waits. And you will live up to 
the Divine expectation! 



[208] 



a ^oung jman and f (0 j^iotl^et'jj 



[209] 



As a mere literary monument, the English of the 
Bible remains the noblest example of the English tongue, 
while its perpetual use made it, from the instant of its 
appearance, the standard of our language. 

John Richard Green. 

From the time that, at my mother^s feet or on my 

father^ s knee, I first learned to lisp verses from the sacred 

writings, they have been my daily study and vigilant 

contemplation. If there is anything in my style or 

thoughts to be commended, the credit is due to my kind 

parents in instilling into my mind an early love of the 

Scriptures, 

Daniel Webster. 

All that I have taught of Art, everything that I have 

written, whatever greatness there has been in any thought 

of mine, whatever I have done in my life, has simply 

been due to the fact that, when I was a child, my mother 

daily read with me a part of the Bible, and daily made 

me learn a part of it by heart, 

John Ruskin. 

I think I know my Bible as few literary men know 

it. There is no book in the world like it, and the finest 

novels ever written fall far short in interest of any one 

of the stories it tells. Whatever strong situations I have 

in my books are not of my creation, but are taken from 

the Bible, " The Deemster ^^ is the story of the Prodigal 

Son, *' The Bondman^' is the story of Esau and Jacob, 

" The Scapegoat^' is the story of Eli and his sons, but 

with Samuel as a little girl; and " The Manxman*' is 

the story of David and Uriah, 

Hall Caine. 

[210] 



CHAPTER SEVEN 




a ^oung jEan and l$i^ jmoti^er'js 

HE springs of civilization 
are three: 
The history of the world 
hangs on the race that built 
the Parthenon; on the race 
that ruled the world; and 
on the race that wrote the Bible." Three great 
races — the Greek, the Roman, and the He- 
brew: Three great achievements — art, law, 
and the Bible — and the greatest of these is 
the Bible. They who follow the streams of 
modern civilization back to their rise, come 
at last upon the Bible. 

In our age noted for its love of childhood, 
education has been born again. Back of Hor- 
ace Mann, back of Froebel, back of Pesta- 
lozzi, back of Abelard, we come at last upon 
the Teacher out of Galilee. Modern education 
is less the child of the Revival of learning, 
than of the printing of the New Testament. 
[211] 



a poung jEan'0 Beltgfon 

Wherever the Bible is on the tongue of the 
people, you find a spelling-book in the hands 
of their children. Modern education takes its 
rise in the teaching of Him who said, " First 
the blade, then the ear, after that the full 
corn in the ear." 

The other boasted achievement of our age is 
our government by the people. Take up your 
map, and run your eye over the ancient world 
and the media3val world, and you will not find 
Democracy anywhere. Now look at the mod- 
ern world, and you will find the reign of the 
people. In Holland — ^but it was in brave little 
Holland that men first unchained the Bible: 
In Switzerland — but it was in Geneva that 
John Calvin founded his theocracy, in which 
the Bible was both text-book and constitu- 
tion: In England and Scotland — lands of 
Cromwell, Knox, WyclifFe, and the Free 
Kirk, where the Bible was song-book and 
literature: In America — ^land of Pilgrim 
and Puritan, who came into the wilderness 
for freedom to read the Bible for themselves, 
and in their own way practice its worship 
[ 212 ] 



I^ijsi imotl^et'0 TSihlt 



and its teachings. There is no reign of the 
people in Italy, or Spain, or South America. 
These are modern countries, and in some of 
them they have the name and dream of De- 
mocracy. But it is only a dream. They have 
no Democracy, for the people have no Bible. 
Moses and Jesus are the first Democrats. 
The Bible is the Mother of Democracy. 
The glory of Italy is her art. What awoke 
the passion for beauty within her people, and 
kindled the genius of the great masters.? 
Italian Art is a modem flower. Always those 
sons of the southern clime had used brush 
and easel. But for centuries they only learned 
art's language and wrought out art's prose. 
Then the divine afflatus fell upon them, and 
they made our galleries glorious forever. 
What stirred their sleeping genius.'^ Let Ra- 
phael's Sistine tell you. Let Titian's Trans- 
figuration testify. Let Angelico upon his 
knees whisper the secret. He has a Bible in 
his hand and his prayer is, " O Lord, teach 
me to paint thy Gospel." The Bible has in- 
spired art. 

[213] 



a ^oung jman'js Eeligton 

Music is still in her youth. She hath the heart 
of a child, and also the faith of a child. 
What baptized the children of genius with 
song.? Listen to Handel's Messiah, and 
Haydn's Creation, and Mendelssohn's Elijah, 
and Gounod's Redemption, and even Wag- 
ner's Parsifal, and you will know that the 
great musical compositions are only the Bible 
set to music. The Bible is the inspiration of 
Music. 

You and I belong to the English race, and 
the glory of the English race is its litera- 
ture. Its cradle was a monastery, where Caed- 
mon and Bede first sang of scriptural themes. 
From Chaucer's day till now, the Bible has 
been our literature as well as our religion. 
This book lent Milton his Paradise; Bunyan 
his dream; Tennyson his immortal hope; 
Browning his vision ; rugged Carlyle his law ; 
and Ruskin the splendors of his imagination. 
Victoria, Queen and Empress, was right 
when, handing a Bible to the Ambassador of 
an Oriental empire, she said, " Tell your 
master, this book is the secret of England's 
[ 214] 



I^fjs piotW^ ^^ble 



greatness." Of our literature, the Bible is 
both dew and sun. 

And yet the Bible is a new book. We have 
not yet gotten used to it, or taken its true 
measure. All our ideas of it have been too 
small. The Bible is growing upon us. A hun- 
dred times men have thought they have said 
the final word about it, and had compassed 
its wonders in their definition. Then, lo! it 
grew and burst their old notion, and they 
had to make their definition larger. That is 
all there is to what we hear so much about 
nowadays, the storm that is raging over the 
Bible, called Higher Criticism. 
Some say, and say it gladly, " It's end has 
come. The authority of the Bible is de- 
stroyed." They are vain babblers ! 
Then there are people who look upon this 
present discussion fearfully, and because the 
old definitions are crumbling, and the old 
conceptions are being thrown away, cry out 
in grief, " The Bible is being destroyed." 
Just now in this country a new society has 
been formed to hold back Bible criticism. It 
[215] 



a pouuQ jEan'jS Eeligton 

is like forming a society to hold back the 
tides with your hand. It is like forming a 
society to go out into the garden, in the 
May days, and, by binding a band around 
each bursting grain, trying to keep back the 
harvest in the seed. It is not an earthquake; 
it is life. It is not destruction; it is growth. 
So I stand by all the present-day discus- 
sions, and fear, and acrimony, and I am not 
afraid. I see only birth-pangs. There are 
only growth-pains. God is causing more light 
to break out on his word. We are going to 
have a greater, grander, diviner Bible than 
the world ever knew. 

The Bible is a new book. We have never yet 
fully possessed it. The Jewish church is older 
than the Bible. Abraham, the seer, was cen- 
turies before Ezra, the scribe. 
Jesus did not have our Bible. The sacred 
writings, on which he fed and grew strong, 
were those of the Old Testament only. The 
gold of the New Testament was yet to be 
coined out of his own heart. 
The early church did not have the Bible. 
[216] 



m^ PiotW^ ^tble 



Besides the Old Testament in Greek, the first 
churches had traditions of Jesus from those 
who knew him in the flesh. They had, now 
and then, a letter from some Apostle. Some 
are lost: some remain with us to this day. 
At last the Apostle John, longest to survive 
of the Twelve, and lingering on to his hun- 
dredth year, writes a biographical rhapsody 
of the Master. Its language is Greek, and 
his pen is dipped in love. He is the prophet 
of fire. Slowly it gets circulated in a few 
churches. Still earlier, Peter's disciple, John 
Mark, and Paul's protege, Luke, the physi- 
cian, and Matthew, the publican, wrote down 
an account of what they heard their masters 
tell about the life and doings and sayings 
of the Divine Master. They are a sort of 
Memorabilia. When Jesus does speak, he 
speaks through the lips of a man who had 
seen him in his youth, and who now is grown 
old; or through the lips of a man who knew 
a man who had known the Lord. They are 
neither photographs nor biographies. They 
are color; an atmosphere; portraits. 
[217] 



a ^oung 0ian'^ meUgton 

A few of these scattered and widely different 
gospels, and histories, and letters survived. 
One church had one ; some far distant church 
had another. Some were lost and again found. 
Some were lost and never found, and live only 
in quotation. No single writer ever dreamed 
he was adding a book to the Scriptures. The 
early church did not have the Bible. 
After some three or four hundred years the 
church passed her childhood. In her youth 
she had overrun the world, and her entrance 
upon maturity was also her entrance upon 
royalty. She became a ruler. She had bishops, 
and cathedrals, and liturgies. But she did not 
have the Bible. 

Then she began to prize those neglected let- 
ters and written traditions of her infancy. 
Polycarp's last disciple was long dead. He 
was the last living man who had ever seen 
a man who had seen an Apostle. The Mas- 
ter's words became precious. Becoming rich 
now, the church had leisure for study and 
scholarship. Scholars began to seek out the 
scattered manuscripts and copy them. There 
[218] 



1$i^ iHotl^et'0 13tlile 



was, of course, no printing, and to possess 
a book required a fortune. Churches that had 
an old manuscript were exceedingly jealous 
of it, and each one claimed for its own the 
highest honor. As men went on collecting 
these manuscripts, they multiplied. There 
were different readings. Spurious writings 
sprang up purporting to come from Apos- 
tolic days. Councils met, scholars gave judg- 
ment; some were cast out, others were in- 
cluded. At last the canon was decided. The 
scholars of the church had a collection of 
sacred writings. 

In 385 Jerome translated these collected 
writings into Latin. It was called the Vul- 
gate, because it was translated into the com- 
mon, or vulgar, tongue. It was counted al- 
most sacrilege at the time, and it was only 
after two or three hundred years more that 
it became the universally accepted Scriptures. 
The church had now come to her palmy days. 
But for nearly a thousand years yet the 
world did not have a Bible. The church had 
a Bible, and it was written in a dead tongue. 
[219] 



Only the scholar could read it. Only the rich 
could own it. Only the priest was permitted 
to study it. It was a chained book. 
Then printing was invented. The revival of 
learning followed. Scholars began to print 
Bibles. Men like WyclifFe and Huss tried to 
translate it into the speech of the people. 
Rome forbade them, and burned the books 
when found, and persecuted with fire and 
prison all who published or possessed. To 
have a Bible was a crime. To be found read- 
ing it was death or imprisonment. The people 
of that day knew nothing more of the Bible 
than they do now of Homer, or not so much. 
When Columbus discovered America the 
world had no Bible. 

For two hundred years longer this strife 
went on between the law of the church and 
the desire of the people to know. Martyrs 
died in every country. Partial translations 
were made in every land. Scholars were study- 
ing it. New manuscripts were discovered. 
Corrections were made, and at last, in the 
seventeenth century, under the compulsion of 
[ 220 ] 



f ij5 jmotl^et'^ OBible 



the English people, and under the permission 
of the English King, the King James English 
Bible was given to the world, four years after 
the settlement of Jamestown, and nine years 
before the Pilgrims came to Plymouth. The 
scholars who made it received only their 
board, and no pay; and the expense of pub- 
lication was borne by private individuals. 
The first authorized English Bible is only as 
old as the United States. This is the Bible 
of our fathers, and whose idiom has been the 
creator of English speech. " ^It lives on the 
ear like a music that can never be forgotten ; 
like the sound of church bells, which the con- 
vert scarcely knows how he can forego. Its 
felicities seem often to be almost things rather 
than words. It is the part of the national 
mind, and the anchor of the national serious- 
ness. The memory of the dead passes into 
it. The potent traditions of childhood are 
stereotyped in its verses. It is the representa- 
tive of a man's best moments ; all that there 
has been about him of soft, and gentle, and 

1 F. W. Faber. 
[ 221 ] 



a i^oung pim'^ Mtliq^ion 

pure, and penitent, and good speaks to him 
forever out of his English Bible." 
But the end was not yet. Time went on and 
knowledge grew, and scholarship made gains. 
New manuscripts were discovered. 
There are three great manuscripts of the 
Bible.^ The oldest one is the manuscript in 
the Vatican, and this was not accessible to 
the men who made our English Bible. 
Another great manuscript is called the Sina- 
itic manuscript. It was not discovered until 
1844, and then it was found in an old mon- 
astery at the foot of Mt. Sinai, and was 
being thrown away as waste paper by the 
ignorant monks. It was not until 1859 that 
this manuscript was secured, and now reposes 
safely in the library at St. Petersburg, in 
the keeping of the Greek church. 
The other manuscript is called the Alex- 
andrian, and is in the British Museum. 
Not one of these manuscripts was in the pos- 
session of the men who made the English 

1 Smyth's 'VHow We Got Our Bible," and Pattison's 
•' History of the English Bible." 
[ 222 ] 



I^ijs 0iotW^ ^tble 



Bible. But at last these had all been discov- 
ered or made accessible. Scholarship had 
grown. We knew a great deal more about the 
Greek language. Moreover, our own lan- 
guage had changed, and it was desired that 
there should be a more accurate translation. 
For the last one hundred years there had been 
more or less discussion about a new trans- 
lation of the Bible that should include all this 
new knowledge. Several private translations 
were made. At last the scholarship and the 
reverence of England and America took ac- 
tion. And in the month of June, 1870, a 
company of distinguished scholars met for 
the first time in Jerusalem chamber in West- 
minster Abbey. It was a historic spot. There 
the Westminster confession had been drawn 
up. There had been made the prayer-book 
revision, but never was there a greater com- 
pany than this company of quiet scholars 
who met on that June day to take up their 
sacred task. After ten years, as a result of 
their labor, the Revised Version of the Eng- 
lish Bible was published. 
[223] 



a goung jman'is; Eeltgton 

That Revised Version has not yet taken its 
place in the homes of the people. We are 
wedded to the words of the older version. 
But it has taken its place in the schools^ in 
the pulpits, in the hands of the scholars. 
And, moreover, after two or three hundred 
years, it will be the language of the people. 
But whether it does, or whether there shall 
come yet some more better translation, the 
Revised Bible has a place of honor. It is su- 
perior to the old in accuracy, in reliability, 
and in authority. It is the best work of the 
best scholarship of the world. And now that 
it is being given into the hands of the people 
by the millions, one million of copies each 
year, it is not strange that men have said, 
" At last the world has the Bible." 
But the end is not yet. The Higher Criticism 
has come. Men have been afraid of it, and 
complained that it was destroying the Bible. 
They said the same thing when men wanted 
to translate the Latin Vulgate into English. 
You remember, and so do I, with what sus- 
picion and distrust many people looked on 
[ 224] 



PjS piotW^ ^tlJle 



the Revised Version. Some called it sacrilege. 
We know better now. It threw light on the 
Bible. It glorified it. 
What is the Higher Criticism.'^ 
All this work of revision, the comparing of 
manuscripts, the correction of texts, the de- 
termining of readings — in other words, the 
criticism of the text of the Bible — is called 
the Lower Criticism. 

You can see that this is a highly important 
and necessary work. It makes for the Bible's 
accuracy and truthfulness. It is a scraping 
away of the barnacles. It is a friendly service. 
It exalts the Bible. 

Now, the Higher Criticism is likewise a neces- 
sary and friendly office. Instead of dealing 
with texts, now our critic deals with books, 
and literary characteristics, and authorship, 
and age, and viewpoint. He may make mis- 
takes. He may be an enemy. He may some- 
times hurt — the faithful surgeon does. But, 
generally, he is a friend on a mission of 
truth and love. The Higher Critic is the 
Bible's friend. 

[ 225 ] 



One of the supreme hours of my life came 
when, after the dream of years, I first stood 
before an old-world cathedral. There above 
me towered up into the sky, until its towers 
were lost in the clouds, one of the greatest 
of Gothic temples. I was awed into silence. 
Mystery sat upon me as a garment. Hoary 
age, grandeur of conception, noble art, and 
historic association united to deepen my rev- 
erence and heighten my admiration. 
I fell in with a strange old man. He was of 
a bygone age. He was a peasant and loved 
the minster. He warned me against guides 
and guide-books, and, above all, against the 
clergy, all of whom, he said, had conspired 
together to traduce the minster and rob it 
of its antiquity and glory. Then I listened 
to his interpretation. 

He said, this is the oldest church in the world. 
Paul, in one of his journeys to Spain, came 
into Britain and preached here. His bones 
rest here. Alfred laid its corner stone and was 
its architect. It is the largest temple on the 
earth. It has never been in need of repair 
[ 226 ] 



W jHoti^et'jS -Bible 



nor added to. It was all built and finished in 
seven years. There is not a flaw in it to this 
day. The old man was so sweet, and sincere, 
and earnest, and his faith was so simple, that 
I loved him. 

In other days I took my book on the cathe- 
dral, written by its dean, and, under a guide, 
I began to study it. I found out that the 
cathedral was six hundred years in building; 
that it did not go back to Alfred, but only 
to the Norman ; and that it was the third tem- 
ple built on the spot — the first one being an 
altar, where our heathen ancestors sacri- 
ficed children to Wodin. Many architects had 
planned. Many builders had wrought. It was 
really a patchwork, or crazy-quilt, in archi- 
tecture. The nave was Norman ; the transepts 
were early English; the chapter house and 
sacristy were decorative; the chapel was per- 
pendicular. Of course Paul was never in 
England, and his bones did not rest there. A 
hundred things the old man had said were 
only legends and guesses. He did not know. 
But the cathedral was there. To tell the truth 
[227 ] 



31 ^oung pian'0 Eeligton 

about its building, to know its true history, 
did not destroy the cathedral, nor rob it of 
its massive grandeur. Nay, the true story 
added to its charm. It was not a miracle, it 
was a growth. It was not a curiosity, it was 
a history. As I came to understand it, I 
was baptized anew with a love for our Eng- 
lish race. I was thrilled with the struggle of 
English faith. I saw as never before the story 
of Christian progress, and victory of the 
cross over animalism, and ignorance, and sin. 
The truth made it a far grander cathedral 
than the myth ever did. 

This is a parable. The Bible is the cathedral, 
nobler than an erection of man, " the scale of 
whose proportions are mystical, strange, di- 
vine." The peasant man is the traditions that 
have grown up around the Bible. The first peo- 
ple who had the Bible were fresh from Roman- 
ism, with her legends and superstitions, and 
sense of wonder, and marvelous. They trans- 
ferred their allegiance from an ancient 
church to an ancient book. They invested it 
with all the mystery and miracle they had 
[228 ] 



i^ijS imotl^er'0 I3ible 



once attributed to the church. The church 
was errorless — the Bible was errorless. The 
church was infalHble, and they put over 
against it an infallible book. The church 
went back to Peter — their Bible went back to 
Moses. The church had a miraculous begin- 
ning — the Bible had. God dictated the ac- 
count of creation and early history to Moses, 
and, along with it, an account of his own 
death. They sought to magnify all the won- 
der element. Joshua bade the sun stand still, 
and it obeyed. Jonah lived three days inside 
of a fish. All these and a hundred other sto- 
ries were told about the Bible. And to ques- 
tion them was infidelity ; and to seek to know 
the facts was to dishonor the Bible. All this 
was just like the old man at the minster. It 
was childlike and simple-hearted, but it was 
dangerous. It gave the enemies of the Bible 
their chance to attack it and turn many away 
from its ancient and divine ministry. 
Then the wise and learned man came. Gen- 
erally, like the dean of the cathedral, he 
loved his Bible, and gave his life to know it. 
[229] 



91 ^oung iHan*0 ISeligiou 

He said, " Let us find out what the Bible 
itself says. Let us find out the truth," and he 
began to spend his life on the study of the 
Bible itself. He had found out that a hun- 
dred popular traditions were fancies, and he 
is finding out a thousand truths about the 
Bible that men never knew before. Many of 
our old uncritical notions about the Bible 
may perish, but the Bible remains. And I 
love it and cling to it, not for what men have 
thought about it, nor for the manner of its 
making, but for itself. Some of the moss may 
be scraped away, but the " Impregnable 
Rock " remains. Indeed, the Bible is growing 
on us under the process. It is looming up 
grander than we knew. The pyramids of 
Egypt grow larger when we clear away the 
sands of the desert. The Sphinx is one hun- 
dred times larger than the first travelers 
knew, now that the excavators have uncov- 
ered it. The Bible is tenfold more wonder- 
ful and true now that the mistakes about 
it are found out. Truth is grander than 
fiction. 

[ 230 ] 



1$i^ i^otl^efis Bible 



I cannot tell you what Higher Criticism ^ has 
already found out about the Bible. It would 
of itself take many days. I will only bring 
you samples to show you that our fears of it 
are unfounded, and to reassure you that the 
" foundations of God stand sure " ; and to 
make you see that, when they are done, we 
will not only have the Bible, but that really 
for the first time in the world the people will 
really possess a Bible, sure, certain, impreg- 
nable, and unassailable, that cannot be denied 
or put aside. 
We have found out: 

1. That the Bible is a library, and not a 
single book. It is made up of sixty-six books, 
written in different languages, and running 
through some fifteen hundred years. It con- 
tains history, poetry, drama, sermons, ora- 
tions, letters, biographies, stories, proverbs, 
and visions. It is a body of literature. 

' Read Prof. Terry's '* Moses and the Prophets " and 
Prof. Nash's ''Higher Criticism of the New Testa- 
ment." Also Washington Gladden's " Who Wrote the 
Bible?" 



[231 ] 



a poung jttan'js Beligfon 

These facts once evident, it throws a flood of 
light on its meaning and interpretation. 
It gets rid of that old typewriter idea of its 
making, which said God dictated every word 
of it, and an inspired man was less than other 
men, an automaton. The world has had 
Bibles written by dictation, and they bear the 
marks of it. The Mormon Bible is a dicta- 
tion. The Mohammedan Bible is a dictation. 
And they show it. They are wooden, dead, 
human — ^their writers were automata. I do 
not believe in inspired machines. I have never 
found much inspiration in a typewriter. You 
can dictate a letter about wool, or paint, or 
stocks ; but you cannot dictate a letter to 
your mother. You cannot dictate a book or 
a poem. You cannot dictate your love for 
your child. You cannot dictate a prayer. 
You cannot dictate a sermon. A dictated ser- 
mon is a dead sermon. All these words that 
express your heart, and love, and aspiration, 
and tenderness, and soul are born, not made; 
thought out, felt out, yearned out, prayed 
out, not said. They are inspirations, not dic- 
[ 232 ] 



i^ijs JHotl^er'jg 'hiUt 



tations. Inspiration is a breath, a touch, a 
thrill, a mood within. They make men more, 
not less ; they open eyes, not close them ; they 
attune ears, not stop them; they quicken fac- 
ulties, not blunt them; they intensify the 
powers of a man, not drug them. I am glad 
our Bible is the highest utterance of holy 
men " whose hearts God had touched." It 
is a grander conception than the mechan- 
ical idea and makes the Bible grander and 
diviner. 

To know that the Bible is a great literature 
gives the key of its understanding, or, rather, 
many keys. I do not know of a greater 
enemy of the Bible than the old question all 
of us have heard a thousand times, " Do you 
not beheve what the Bible says ? " when the 
person who asked it meant to put you to con- 
fusion because you have said you did not 
think that the world was made in six days, 
or you did not believe in total depravity, or 
the doctrine of predestination. And then he 
would pick out some isolated text, whether 
out of a poem, a serm.on, or a story, and 
[ 233 ] 



a ^oung iEan'0 Eeltgion 

quote it and say, " The Bible teaches it, and 
I beKeve the Bible." 

So do I. But I do not believe what some men 
say about the Bible. I will not yield to igno- 
rance. The Bible is a literature. It is not all 
history. It is not a text-book. It is not a 
hand-book of ready knowledge. It is not an 
answer to ten thousand hard questions. We 
have such books, but nobody takes their glib 
infallibility for a Bible. The Bible is htera- 
ture. 

Its history I will read and interpret as his- 
tory. Its poetry I will read and understand 
as poetry. Its stories I will read and under- 
stand as stories. I will not interpret a poem 
literally. I will not take the letter of a story 
as a fact. I will take the truth it illustrates 
as the fact. I will use both my intelligence 
and my common sense. I will not read David's 
saying, " The Lord is my Shepherd " — 
poetry as it is — as prose and say the Bible 
teaches that God is a literal shepherd and a 
man is a sheep. I will not read the story of 
the garden of Eden as dry-as-dust history. 
[ 234 ] 



i^t0 jHotl^er'js idihlt 



I will read the poetry as the language of 
imagination. 

You have heard men say that Joshua com- 
manded the sun to stand still in the valley 
of Ajalon, and that it obeyed, and the day 
was made longer for his battle. And they 
told us that the Bible said so in the book of 
Joshua. The Revised Bible shows us better. 
The book of Joshua is literature. In the de- 
scription of the battle the writer quotes a 
verse of an old battle-hymn from the book 
of Jasher, which reads: 

'^ SuUj stand thou still upon Gibeon^ 
And thou moon in the valley of A]alon.'[ 

It is a quotation; it is a poem; and the 
writer of the history used it with never a 
thought that after generations would take it 
all for literal prose. This illustrates a thou- 
sand cases of making the Bible say things 
it never meant to say. Men had not found 
out it was literature. Knowing that the Bible 
is literature, and reading poems as poems, 
history as history, and stories as stories, a 
thousand difficulties disappear, a thousand 
[235 ] 



beauties appear, and the Bible grows on our 
confidence and love. To understand the Bible 
is to enthrone it. I am grateful to the men 
who have made it clear and plain. They are 
giving us a nobler Bible. 

2. Another great truth we have found out 
about the Bible through this new study and 
criticism, is that the Bible is a growth, a his- 
tory. There is progress in revelation. 
In its very beginnings it was very crude, be- 
cause men were crude. Just as fast as they 
could receive it, God goes on to give them 
higher idea of the truth. The Bible is the 
record of the evolution of religion. When 
Moses began with those slaves in Egypt they 
were very ignorant. They did not know what 
was right, or what was wrong; they did not 
have any true worship ; they did not know 
that there w^as only one God, and they did 
not know about his great, rich, loving nature. 
Now how do we teach children history, 
religion, geography, geology.^ It would be 
perfectly absurd to take a little boy of four 
into a theological school and give him lec- 
[236] 



I^tjs PiotW^ ^tJjle 



tures on divinity. It is perfectly useless to 
bring Agassiz into the kindergarten and tell 
him to explain to the children about the crea- 
tion of the world. Instead of that, the mother 
and the kindergarten teachers begin with the 
very a, b, c's. They adapt truth to the chil- 
dren's minds. And as the child grows in in- 
telligence, and increases in understanding and 
heart power, the truth grows and enlarges 
until at last the child becomes a scholar. That 
is what was done in the making of the Bible. 
Altars were built and sacrifices permitted — 
for this was the only religious language the 
crude people knew. Then great symbols were 
introduced. The first one was the tabernacle 
of Moses. Later when this nomadic people 
became a settled people and had a govern- 
ment, David and Solomon built the temple, 
with its court opening into court. On the 
outside were the great multitudes and the 
doors were shut — it was a symbol telling 
them that sin separated men from God. In- 
side of this was a Holy of Holies, into 
which the High Priest only could go, and he 
[237] 



but once a year, and there was the place and 
altar that was dedicated to God — it was a 
symbol impressing a whole nation with the 
majesty and sacredness of God.^ 
Then the prophets came, one by one, and 
began to translate the meaning of these sacred 
symbols into speech. They preached to the 
people about justice, and mercy, and hon- 
esty, and cleanness, and righteousness, and 
holiness. They were the preachers and states- 
men of the nation. They founded schools 
which became colleges of culture and centers 
of religion. Finally these grew into syna- 
gogues, and every Jewish hamlet had its 
church, and every Jewish family had its wor- 
ship. 

Poets, likewise, had risen among them and set 
to music their wonderful history, the wonder- 
ful care of God, and all their hopes and fears. 
The nation became one great singing-school 
for the singing of these poems. Musicians 
would accompany on a lute, and a whole com- 

-"Bible Studies"— H. W. Beecher. 
[ 238 ] 



ti0 iHotl^et'0 T5mt 



pany of j^oung men and maidens would sing 
these national religious hymns. They became 
the liturgy of the people. 
When at length from temple, sacrifice, and 
ceremony, from priest and prophet, God had 
developed within these people the great ideas 
of right and wrong, of truth and justice, of 
conscience and God, the fullness of time had 
been attained. Jesus came with his life, with 
his teaching about God, with his divine deeds 
— the perfect revelation — the truth mani- 
fested in the flesh, " the Way, the Truth, and 
the Life." 

The account of all this long and tedious and 
painful development is written down in the 
Bible. In the Bible you find the laws of these 
people in different stages of their develop- 
ment. Their poems and sermons of the old 
prophets, the visions of the old men. It is 
the literature of the soul of the Hebrew 
people through all the long years and all 
their adversities and all their glories. As 
Lessing said, " The Bible is the history of 
the religious education of man.'' 
[ 2S9 ] 



Now, if this is true, it is not only a grand 
conception, but throws new Hght upon the 
understanding of the scriptures. Men like Mr. 
IngersoU have come to us and told us that 
the Bible is a wicked book, because, in the days 
of the Judges, its heroes were licentious and 
cruel, and vengeful in the days of the early 
kings ; that David is called a man after God's 
own heart, and David was a libertine ; that 
Jacob is counted a prince in Israel, and Jacob 
was a knave; that Solomon is counted a wise 
man, and Solomon was an Oriental despot, 
with an Oriental harem; and that if David, 
Solomon, and Jacob were living now, they 
would be sent to the penitentiary. " What 
kind of a Bible," they have asked, " is this 
which sets the crown of honor upon the brow 
of such men and such ethics? " When they 
ask that, they ask a silly thing. We have an 
answer. 

If we believed, as our fathers did, that the 
Bible was an infallible book, and that one 
part of it was just as true and valuable as 
every other part, and that a text out of 
[ 240 ] 



f ijs iHoti^er'0 13ible 



the Judges represented the truth of God as 
much as a text out of the Gospels, we would 
be in confusion. We could not answer them. 
But with this higher view that the Bible is 
a history of the religious development of 
the race, it all becomes clear. We interpret 
what we tell our children in the light of 
what that truth leads to when they are 
grown. The things we teach in the kinder- 
garten are but fragmentary, and find their 
fulfillment in what we teach in the colleges. 
What God taught those men, in the morning 
of the world, was the best truth they were 
able to receive at that time. It was God's ac- 
commodating Himself to the crude intelli- 
gence of men. It was far better than any- 
thing those people had in that time, and it 
was a school that was leading them on toward 
the truth. 

All the Bible points to the full revelation in 
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the standard. 
We will not go back to the book of Joshua 
for our ethics. We will not go back to Moses 
for our righteousness. We will not go back 
[241 ] 



to David or Jacob as our highest types. We 
will call no man master save Jesus Christ. 
In the light of what they could do, and in 
the light of how God was leading the race 
on, these old biographies, and these old laws 
and poems, and these old failures, and these 
old victories, and these old heart burnings, 
and inspirations, are interesting and they are 
divine. And we see that the sweep of the 
divine care is longer than we knew. And the 
patience and the leading of the divine revela- 
tion is grander than we dreamed. And with 
Cowper we sing: 

"God moves in a mysterious way 
His wonders to perform; 
He plants his footsteps in the sea, 
And rides upon the storm, 

*'Deep in unfathomable mines 
Of never-failing skill, 
He treasures up his bright designs, 
And works his sovereign will. 

''His purposes will ripen fast. 
Unfolding every hour; 
The bud may have a bitter taste, 
But sweet will be the flower.^' 
[ 242 ] 



i^tjS MotW^ ^il^le 



3. Modem Bible study finds the Bible dis- 
tinctively a religious literature. It is not a 
text-book on chemistry, or astronomy, or ge- 
ology. It is a history of the soul of man and 
its development, not of his body or his world. 
It is the history of the creature rather than 
creation. The New Testament is not author- 
ity on government. It is authority on relig- 
ion. Paul is not a professor of metaphysics, 
he is a teacher of religion. Moses is not au- 
thority on geology and biology, he is au- 
thority on moral law. Genesis does not teach, 
does not pretend to teach, cosmogony ; it does 
teach God. Paul did not know that the earth 
was a sphere; he died supposing it a plane. 
He never dreamed of the Western hemi- 
sphere. He never heard of the Copernican 
system. He had no knowledge of creation by 
evolution. If he had made reference, for pur- 
poses of illustration, to the flatness of the 
earth, or the sun's revolving about the earth, 
or creation by fiat, it would not invalidate 
what he taught about sin, and righteousness, 
and immortality. His message was religious. 
[ 243] 



His vision was religious. His inspiration was 
a religious inspiration. We would not expect 
him to know about undiscovered lands, sim- 
ply because he did know about new and great 
religious truths. 

Take John Wesley for example, scholar of 
Oxford, citizen of the eighteenth century, 
and preacher of Christ, and the greatest 
winner of souls since Paul. If ever there was 
an inspired preacher in the modern world it 
was John Wesley. He preached a celebrated 
sermon on " The Cause and Cure of Earth- 
quakes." It is one of the greatest statements 
of man's religious accountability and God's 
providence that ever fell upon human ears. 
It stirred the conscience of England like a 
trumpet's challenge. Yet, as an account of 
the physical phenomenon called an earth- 
quake, it is old wives' fables. For illustration 
of his thesis he took the current teaching of 
his day, which has passed away before mod- 
ern knowledge. His thesis is as true and ring- 
ing as ever ; his illustration is old lumber and 
a curiosity. John Wesley was authority on 
[ 244] 



f f0 imoti^et'js l$tljle 



religion, not on earthquakes. Nobody denies 
the truth of his rehgion because his illustra- 
tions are outgrown. Every sermon you ever 
heard, every sermon preached to-day on the 
earth, will have in it illustrations from cur- 
rent ideas that will be outgrown to-morrow; 
but in so far as these sermons teach great 
spiritual lessons, they will be true a hundred 
years from now. Shakespeare's mistaken no- 
tions of geography do not invalidate Shake- 
speare's Hamlet. Because John Bunyan did 
not know modern science, and was mistaken 
about some of his scientific ideas, does not 
destroy the religious truth of his wonderful 
allegory. Next to the Bible, the Pilgrim's 
Progress is still the most popular book in 
the world. 

Now turn to the Bible and to Genesis. Genesis 
is not authority on geology. Genesis does not 
tell, and does not know, how the world was 
made. Genesis is not interested in that prob- 
lem. If that had been the question, Genesis 
would never have been written. The Hebrews 
were not a scientific people. They cared noth- 
[ 245 ] 



31 goung jHan'js ISeWgion 

ing for questions of philosophy. They ac- 
cepted without question and with little inter- 
est the philosophic statements of their age. 
The Chaldaeans and Egyptians had an ac- 
count of creation. It was like Genesis, for the 
Hebrew mind did not question it. And yet 
the Genesis story differs from theirs, as day 
differs from night. The Hebrew was relig- 
ious. His problem was not how, but Who; 
not the method, but the Maker; not the way, 
but the Cause. He had found out God. So 
this Genesis author quickly ran over the age- 
old story of creation, and transfused it with 
power and transfigured it with truth, and 
wrote over it, and in it, and back of it his 
great revelation, " In the beginning, God 
made the heavens and the earth." No more 
demiurges for him. No more baking mud 
and spontaneous generation for him. No 
more myth and silly superstition for him. No 
more materialism and atheism for him. He 
left that for Greeks, and Romans, and Chal- 
dseans, and moderns. He knew better. He had 
vision. He had a revelation. He shouted out, 
[ 246 ] 



m^ PiotW^ ^ilJle 



" In the beginning, God made the heavens 
and the earth," and there it stands and shines 
forever. The old cosmogony has passed away, 
and would be forgotten save that it is em- 
balmed, as fossils in the rocks, in this re- 
ligious and inspired story of religion. But 
that truth shines with undimmed splendor. 
Nobody has ever been able to gainsay it. 
The modern world builds on it. It is still our 
Bible; and it will be truth forever! Nobody 
can discredit my Bible because it does not 
teach cosmogony. It never set out to do so. 
Let evolution come. I rejoice in it. Let new 
truths dawn on men forever. I am not afraid. 
In the realm of religion my Bible stands true. 
The world will never go back on its match- 
less statement, " In the beginning, God.'' 
Oh, friends, let not blind guides lead you 
into the ditch with little and mechanical defi- 
nitions of inspiration! Do not think that 
God is such a one as we are. He knows His 
business. His truths will never make war on 
each other. He will not lead honest men 
astray with will-o'-the-wisps. 
[ 247 ] 



a poung pian'^ Mtliq^im 

^^Our little systems have their day. 
They have their day and cease to he: 
But they are hut hroken lights of thee. 
And thou, Lord, art more than they!" 

Afraid of the Higher Criticism? Is the 
slave afraid of Lincoln who comes to set 
him free? Afraid of investigation? Is David 
afraid of Samuel when he comes to anoint 
him King? Afraid of more light! Is the 
plant, half out of the seed, afraid of the 
sun that comes to free it from its cerements 
of clay, and lift it up, singing, into blossom 
and into a full-grown tree? Afraid of the 
scholar? Is the maiden afraid of her beloved 
when he comes with ring and orange-blossoms 
to claim his bride? Afraid of the fires of test- 
ing? Is the silver afraid of the smelter? Is 
the diamond afraid of the lapidary who 
comes to bind it with gold on the hand of 
love? I know there are crude bunglers and 
false prophets who, in the guise of students, 
may seek the Bible's overthrow. But they are 
rare. There has been but one Benedict Arnold 
in all our history. And, besides, they are im- 
[ 248 ] 



i^i0 piotW^ ^tble 



potent. Treason is not popular. Assassination 
is a crime. " Truth, like diamonds, is brighter 
for polishing." Bread is better for kneading. 
Jesus on the cross was exalted. The Bible is 
enthroned by criticism. 

Already dawns the time of its new corona- 
tion. Once the scholar sneered at it. Now it 
is text-book in every college. No man can be 
a scholar unless he knows it. The poets tip 
their fancies with its beauty, and orators 
crown their oration with its golden words. 
The people have never ceased to love it, and 
now they are going to know it. The solace 
of the aged, the hope of the disconsolate, the 
inspiration of the living, the comfort of the 
dying, it has been and increasingly will be 
for the children of men " The Word of God." 
And our children's children, loving it as much 
as their fathers, but knowing it better, will 
say when they are old, out of a long and 
sweet experience, like one of old: 

" Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, 
And a light unto my pathM 



[249] 



W}^^ ^oung iHen (Bo to €f^mci) 



[251] 



How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of 
Him that bringeth good tidings, and publisheth peace, 
that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salva- 
tion; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth ! 

Isaiah 52:7. 

There is not a hamlet where poor peasants congre- 
gate, but by one means and another, a Church-Appara- 
tus has been got together; roofei edifice with revenues 
and belfries; pulpit, reading-desk, with books and methods; 
possibility in short, and struct prescription, That a man 
stand there and speak of spiritual things to men. It is 
beautiful; even in its great obscuration and decadence, it 
is among the beautifulest, most touching objects one sees 

on the earth. 

Carlyle. 

Thou, whose own vast temple stands. 

Built over earth and sea, 
Accept the walls that human hands 

Have raised to worship Thee, 

May erring minds, that worship here, 

Be thaught the better way; 
And they who mourn, and they who fear, 

Be strengthened as they pray. 

May faith grow firm, and love grow warm. 

And pure devotion rise, 
While, round these hallowed walls, the storm 

Of earth-born passion dies, 

William Cullen Bryant. 

[252] 



VIII 



W^V ^oung pitn (0o to Cl^urcl^ 




HE young man who never 
goes to church has been 
talking a good deal late- 
ly. The public prints have 
been full of interviews, in 
which elaborate reasons are 
given why he does not go to church. 
I take it as a ground for optimism that the 
young fellow feels called upon to make so 
elaborate an explanation. It speaks volumes 
for the place of the church in the reverence 
and affection of society when those who ig- 
nore her ministrations take the trouble to 
send so carefully thought out an excuse. 
Once the shoe was on the other foot. Once 
men had to make apologies for the church, 
and explain to their friends and a scoffing 
public why they did attend her worship. 
Just about a hundred years ago now, even 
in Puritan New England, young men openly 
[253] 



sneered at religion and loudly denounced the 
church. It was thought a reproach among 
public men and college students to be thought 
a Christian. 

Lyman Beecher tells us of Yale College and 
New England in that age, and certainly the 
burden of proof was not then with the young 
man who did not go to church. Times are 
changed. To-day it is the non-churchgoing 
man who offers apology, and even he, though 
he may find fault with the church, speaks 
reverently of religion, and professes high 
admiration for Christ. This whole discussion 
is, as I see it, a tribute to the growing power 
and secure place of the church in the com- 
munity life of the nation. 
We must take the sayings of this young man 
who never goes to church with a grain of 
salt. He is talking a good deal to hear him- 
self. Far be it from me to intimate that he has 
not a grain of truth in his bushel of chaff. 
To my mind it is certain that he tells church 
people a good many facts, unpalatable as 
they may seem. I am glad he has spoken out, 
[ 254 ] 



W^^V ^oimg pitn (Bo to Ci^urc^ 

for it will be a good thing for the minister 
to see himself as others see him. 
There is too much truth in the statement that 
the church is not alive to the needs of young 
men. Sometimes she has talked overmuch of 
heaven and paid too little attention to earth. 
The young man is doubtless right when he 
tells us that there is a good deal of 
poor preaching in the churches. Most of 
us could bear personal testimony on this 
point. 

Some preachers, like some editors, are too 
dogmatic, and from insufficient data give 
utterance to infallible opinions. Some preach- 
ers are like some young men — they say fool- 
ish things. There are little preachers, just as 
there are little lawyers, and little doctors, and 
little editors. 

I will not deny the charge, there are some 
lazy preachers. The pulpit has its share of 
human nature. But, surprising as it may 
seem, I know of no person in all the world 
harder driven with work than the Christian 
minister. I believe it would help us to under- 
[ 255 ] 



stand his work if we were to stop and set 
down the programme of his duties. 
He is an organizer and leader of men as 
truly as the captain of industry. There is 
this difference, however — the men he has to 
organize into an army and lead to victory 
are not on pay, but are volunteers, and, 
moreover, they are his own employers. If he 
succeeds, it must be by persuasion and in- 
spiration, and not by force. He cannot use 
vinegar in his business, but consumes a great 
deal of sugar. 

Then he is a prophet, and when the clock 
strikes he must rise and on old themes speak 
fresh, inspiring messages to audiences as 
large and equal in intelligence to the audi- 
ences before which the lecturer appears once 
a year, or the orator a score of times in all 
his life. There is this difference again — the 
preacher must do this with the same audience 
from three to five times a week. 
Then he is the parish friend and physician. 
After all, there is a propriety in the West- 
ern custom of dubbing every minister " Doc- 
[256] 



^^V ?oung jHen (0o to Ci^utci^ 

tor." He is a soul doctor. The healing of 
hearts is not the least of his business. He 
stands with the dying; he advises the per- 
plexed; he consoles the heartsore; he puts 
new hope into lives that are sunless. His work 
begins with early morn and lasts until mid- 
night; his week has seven days in it instead 
of six. His working life is short, for the cry 
is for young men; the burden requires the 
strength of life's noonday. If there is any 
man in the community who knows about 
flabby muscles, and tired brain, and weary 
body, it is the minister. Nobody would have 
such sympathy for the young man who com- 
plains of overwork and need of rest. 
Yes, the young man tells the truth, but he 
does not tell all the truth. The truth is that 
the churches are not perfect; the truth also 
is that they are trying, with all their might 
and main, to improve and more perfectly 
adapt themselves to their mission. The truth 
is that some ministers are lazy, and often 
ministers preach poorly; but the truth also 
is that most ministers are workers, and that 
[257] 



they often preach well. It is true that when 
Sunday comes men are weary and tired out; 
but there is another truth, which the young 
man has forgotten, or never knew, and that 
is, for the man who is weary and worn out 
with care and strain of workaday there is 
rest, and strength, and courage, and new life 
in the house of God. Men who go to church 
are stronger all the week. 
Then that other objection that we hear so 
much made of, that so many young men do 
not go to church, needs^ to be weighed before 
it is taken for pure gold. If we go to the 
high schools of the country we find that two- 
thirds of all the graduating classes are girls. 
One boy to every three girls take high-school 
courses. But would anybody argue that the 
high schools are useless or hopelessly behind 
the times.? 

" The best measure," somebody has said, " of 
any people is the way they treat a great 
man." Another very accurate measurement of 
a man is his attitude toward the high and the 
serious and the ideal. Truth and worth are 
[ 258 ] 



Wi)^ ^oung jEen (50 to €t^mc^ 

not always found on the side of majorities. 
Man is intelligence, but he is an animal also. 
With many of us the animal is stronger than 
the spiritual. Music, and eloquence, and 
poetry, and pictures only appeal to those 
who have some knowledge of their language. 
From the beginning until now it has only 
been a slow-growing minority that has kept 
music alive, and art alive, and literature 
alive, and Christianity alive. I am not dis- 
couraged because so many young men have 
nothing to do with the church. I am rather 
encouraged, and filled with wonder and awe, 
that so many young men are in the churches. 
But the most grievous fault of this young 
man who never goes to church lies in the fact 
that he assumes to speak for all young men. 
There are young men who never go to church 
and who give reasons for it. There is a far 
larger multitude of young men who do not 
go to church regularly and w^ho have never 
given any reason for it. Then there is an- 
other larger company of young men who do 
go to church and who have reasons for going 
[ 259 ] 



to church. I suppose it will come as a kind 
of a shock to our talking friends to find out 
that there are young men who go to church. 
And yet more young men, absolutely and 
relatively, are in attendance upon the church 
than ever before in human history. I cannot 
prove this by statistics, but I do not believe 
this statement will be questioned. I picked up 
the year-books of two of our leading denom- 
inations and read there that the number of 
men in active membership ranged from one- 
third of the membership to three-sevenths of 
the membership. In no case did the male mem- 
bership quite equal the female membership, 
though in some cases it almost equaled it. 
There are not as many men in attendance as 
women, but almost as many. At any rate it 
is high time to remember the man who goes 
to church. 

More men are engaged in Christian work 
than the world ever saw — I mean not only 
absolutely but relatively more. Look at the 
Young Men's Christian Associations, the 
World Wide Student Movements, the Young 
[ 260 ] 



W^V ^oung f^m (Bo to Ci^utci^ 

People's Societies, the Men's Clubs. And to 
me it is a sign of encouragement to see so 
vast a number, so large a percentage of our 
young men go to church. Why do young 
men go to church? What can the church do 
for a young man? 
What is the church? 

To that question we get not one reply, but 
many. 

We have some one hundred and fifty differ- 
ent churches in this country, and new ones 
spring up every year. Each one believes itself 
to be the best church, and not a few believe 
themselves to be the only church. 
One definition finds the heart of the church 
in its organization. It places emphasis on 
order and government. Here belong the Ro- 
man Catholic Church and the Protestant 
Episcopal Church, each one governed by 
bishops, and each claiming apostolic succes- 
sion, and each one denying the claim of the 
other. Their definition of the church, how- 
ever, is the same. It is, the church is a mon- 
archy, whose ruler is a bishop, who receives 
[261 ] 



a ^oung j^an'js Eeltgton 

his authority from Saint Peter, who was con- 
secrated bishop by Jesus. " Thou art Peter, 
and upon this rock will I build My church. 
I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom 
of Heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind 
upon the earth shall be bound in heaven : and 
whatsoever thou shalt loose upon the earth 
shall be loosed in Heaven." On that one text, 
according to this definition, rests all the 
fabric of the Christian church. Other New 
Testament statements that seem to teach a 
contrary doctrine are explained away. Be- 
sides, the claim that Peter was ever in Rome, 
much less Bishop of Rome, rests on unveri- 
fied tradition. A rather small foundation- 
stone, we would say. Yet on it these churches 
are built, and the claim is made that the 
essential fact of the church is its government 
by bishops. And all other so-called churches, 
who have not this rule of the apostolic bish- 
op, are not churches at all, but only " sects." 
It is the old argument on which monarchy 
rests. " The divine right of kings," it is 
called. It claims that one man is born to 
[262] 



^^V ^oung jmen cKo to Ci^utci^ 

rule, and all other men are bom to obey. 
Without a king there is no government at all. 
Republics are anarchy. This doctrine will 
never gain very wide acceptance in a repub- 
lic. We do not believe any form of govern- 
ment to be divine. Government is a human 
institution, and may be a monarchy, or a re- 
public, or a democracy. Our fathers, who 
built a state without a king, gave us a church 
without a bishop. 

To-day we build our minster and gather 
into gorgeous churches — it is well; but the 
first church has neither tower, nor spire, nor 
roof, nor gable. Like the " body of her Lord 
which slept in a borrowed tomb," this church 
met in a garret, a cellar of a borrowed build- 
ing, or an upper room in some peasant's 
house. To-day we have our church organiza- 
tions after three great models — the Episco- 
pacy, the Presbytery, and the Democracy. 
Any one of these ways is good, provided 
they who hold it do not imagine it is the 
only way. In the days of the early church 
there were neither popes, nor bishops, nor 
[263] 



elders, nor synods, nor councils, nor minis- 
ters. All believers were ministers. In one place 
there was need of someone to administer 
alms to the poor, and deacons were appointed. 
In another place, where the church was made 
up mostly of Jews, these men were called the 
presbyters or elders. In another place they 
were called episcopoi. But they were all the 
same men. Each church did as seemed best in 
its own eyes, and there was no set form of or- 
ganization. We have the church to-day. We 
had the church then. The soul of the church 
is not its organization. 

Another definition finds the crux of the 
church in its creed. Here is where the Evan- 
gelical churches have been wont to place 
emphasis. They read our text differently. 
" Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I 
build My church." The rock is not Peter him- 
self, but his great confession, " Thou art the 
Christ, the son of the living God." This is 
by no means a certain exegesis. This is as slim 
a foundation to build an exclusive claim on 
as Rome's interpretation. It is as narrow to 
[264] 



Wi)v ^oung ptm (Bo to Ci^utci^ 

say a church is not a real church which is not 
an orthodox church as it is to say it is not 
a real church unless it is in the line of apos- 
tolic succession. Is not the Quaker Church, 
with its teaching of peace and with its mar- 
velous life of the spirit, a Christian church? 
Is not the Unitarian Church, with such 
prophets of God as Edward Everett Hale 
and James Martineau, a Christian church? 
I believe in creeds. But what is a creed? 
A creed is the skeleton of truth. You have 
seen 9 skeleton, and you know how gruesome 
it is. If I had here the skeleton of a little 
baby, and should wrap it up in finest silk, 
there is not a mother in the land who would 
take it from me. But if I had a little baby 
here, and it was crying, there is not a mother 
in the land who would not take it, and soothe 
it, and lead it smiling into sleep. But, mother, 
you want your baby to have a skeleton, don't 
you? But you want it to be on the inside, 
covered up with flesh and blood. The only 
skeleton you want is a live skeleton. The only 
creed you want is a live creed. And the only 
[265 ] 



way to keep it alive is to keep it growing. 
A creed, then, is not sacred bones to be wor- 
shiped, but it is a backbone for life. 
The creed we call the Apostle's is a poem 
sung by the faith of all Christendom. But it 
is three hundred years younger than the 
church. The Nicaean Creed is one of the bul- 
warks of the faith, erected in a dark and 
stormy time. The Westminster Confession is 
an honorable landmark in the history of the 
Protestant religion. It is antiquated, hoary, 
honorable, like an old battle flag. Never try 
to patch it and hide the hole in it, or never 
try to sew a piece on to make it tell the story 
of our larger faith. To-day give us a new 
flag to march by that has all the stars in it. 
But the old one, with but thirteen stars, pre- 
serve it, and keep it sacredly. Leave it for 
our children to venerate for the glory of its 
time. But the early church had no Westmin- 
ster Confession. It had not even the short 
Apostle's Creed. People came into the church 
then not by some definition of Christ. All 
who love Christ, and in his spirit would carry 
[ 266 ] 



a^i^t ^oung jHen (0o to Ci^utci^ 

on his life and work, were enrolled. They had 
a church then. The life of the church lies not 
in its creed. 

A third definition of the church, very preva- 
lent among many people, puts all the empha- 
sis on feeling. Experience is the corner-stone 
of the church. The church is composed of 
people who have been bom again, and who 
also remember their own birthday. The 
church is a home for saints. If you ask them 
about children, they either say they have no 
place in the church, or they let them in 
through the back door, or let them stand in 
the vestibule. They are really never in unless 
they first run off and grow wicked, and then 
repent, and get converted in a dramatic sort 
of way. 

The trouble with this notion is it is too nar- 
row for the facts. Jesus said, " Of such are 
the Kingdom of Heaven," and He was speak- 
ing of children. Everybody is not converted 
in a certain memorable way. Most people 
cannot remember their own birth-hour. Paul 
could. There is no record that John could. 
[267] 



a ^oung ittan'jci Eeligfon 

Generally speaking, the worse a man is the 
more dramatic his conversion. The better he 
is the less unknown it is. " Ye cannot tell 
v/hence it cometh nor whither it goeth," 
Christ said of the spiritual life. 
All these notions of the church are half 
truths. They are exclusive definitions. A 
church has organizations, but its genius lies 
not in any particular form of organization. 
There is no more a one divine form of gov- 
ernment in church than in state. A monarchy 
may be a church, but a democracy is a church 
also. 

A church has a creed, but the creed is not the 
heart of the church. It is its description, and 
aim, and ideal. A church has feeling and ex- 
perience, and by experience becomes wise. But 
the life of the church is not its emotion. Let 
us find an inclusive statement. Let us go back 
to our text. But let us approach it from the 
other side, from the historical side. 
The church already existed in the world. It 
went back to Moses anyway, and among the 
Jewish people was the pre-eminent institution. 
[268] 



V^^V ^oung jHen (Bo to Ci^wtcl^ 

By birth, by parental consecration, and by 
his own choice, Jesus was a member of the 
Jewish church. In the synagogue he had sat 
among the elders of the people. Jesus never 
criticised the Jewish church; though he did 
denounce its hierarchy. Jesus never sought 
to destroy the church ; " I came not to de- 
stroy, but to fulfill," was his platform. 
The synagogue was the only church Jesus 
knew. What was the synagogue? A mon- 
archy.? There was not a bishop in it; it was 
ruled by elders, and every wise man was 
eligible to the office. 

A hard and fast doctrine .^^ Men were mem- 
bers in good standing who believed in the 
resurrection, and also men who denied immor- 
tality. Jesus was always crying out against 
the Pharisees with their traditions, which they 
tried to make laws, and their ceremonies, 
which did duty for spirituality. Jesus suf- 
fered for his opinions. 

Was it a company of folk who had been 
miraculously changed .^^ The idea of instan- 
taneous conversion was not even heard of. 
[269] 



It included children and was a family church, 
in which all had a right by birth and train- 
ing. 

Moreover, the Hebrew synagogue was an 
educational institution. Jesus learned to read 
during the week in the same room and from 
the same rabbi who taught him religion on 
the Sabbath. The heart of the Jewish church 
lay in its teaching. Bred into Jesus was the 
notion that the church is the school of re- 
ligion, open for the spiritual education of 
God's children. Who has a right in it? All 
who want to learn. For what did those Jew- 
ish men go to church? For worship, cul- 
ture of heart, and attainment in spiritual 
hfe. 

The whole ministry and teaching of Jesus 
was in accord with this idea. He was a 
prophet, not a priest. He organized no wor- 
ship ; he wrote no creed. He was a democrat, 
not an aristocrat. He was a teacher, not an 
administrator. He went about telling the 
truth and doing good. He refused office to 
Zebedee's sons, saying, " It is the Gentile 
[ 270 ] 



W^i^ poun^ jHen (5o to Ci^urcl^ 

way to lord it over them; but he who would 
be great among you, let him be the servant 
of all." 

With that history, and the whole life and 
teaching of Jesus in mind, let us come to our 
famous text, " Upon this rock will I build 
My church," and find in it the making of a 
pope, if you can. Such an idea never occurs 
to me when I hear the words. No more would 
I ever think that Jesus was founding a 
church on the confession of His divinity. 
Jesus at the time was thwarted by a dead 
orthodoxy, and was trying to free men from, 
the letter that killeth. 

Peter had been at school with the Master for 
two years. Peter was still a frail man, and 
was yet to fall and be reproved. But Peter 
was growing wiser. He was beginning to 
have insight, spiritual vision. Jesus said, 
" Flesh and blood have not revealed it unto 
thee." In this school Peter's spiritual facul- 
ties were becoming clear. This one gleam 
was a harbinger of greater things to come. 
And Jesus, the schoolmaster, like human 
[271] 



teachers who see in their pupils signs of the 
scholar, was transported with joy. His work 
was beginning to show. His faith and pa- 
tience had not been in vain, and He burst 
out, " That's it, Simon, spiritual knowledge 
is the thing. On that rests the church. You 
will grow from more to more in spiritual dis- 
cernment. You will not need to walk, as the 
Scribes teach, like horses by the bit, but 
freely, by your own conscience. You, your- 
self, will know good and evil. Whatsoever 
you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, 
and whatsoever you loose on earth shall be 
loosed in heaven." Religion is not a matter 
of priests and creeds; it is not forms and 
ceremonies and rules and restrictions; it is 
the life of God in the individual soul. It is 
vision, it is liberty, it is the spiritual life. My 
church is a school for the training of spir- 
itual life. 

The church, then, whatsoever its name or 
organization or creed, is the school for the 
training of men and women and children in 
character. And it is a Christian church when 
[ 272 I 



5^]^t Poung jHen (Bo to €\^mc\) 

Jesus Christ is the master, and men are being 
-taught and trained in the spiritual knowl- 
edge and the fine life He revealed. 
In the old thinking, creation was a mechan- 
ical act, in six days complete once forever. 
In the new thinking, creation is an evolution, 
and it is yet far from its goal. In the old 
thinking, salvation was a gift from God, 
great as a storm in the sky, and almost as 
loud. In the new thinking, salvation is char- 
acter, and character is growth. " First the 
blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the 
ear." In the old thinking, the church was a 
government. The Romanists boldly claimed 
it was the Kingdom of God ; the pope was 
vicegerent; the priest held the keys of life 
and death, of sin and forgiveness; salvation 
was a matter of church standing. In the 
church, and obedient to the priest, a man was 
saved. Outside of the church there was no 
salvation. The Protestant world did not be- 
lieve that the church was coterminous with the 
Kingdom of God ; but they have taught that 
the church at least was the gateway into the 
[273] 



Kingdom of God. They have not clearly 
seen how anybody could become a member 
of the Kingdom of God except by way of 
the church, unless he was a baby, or an idiot, 
or probably a heathen. " He that goeth in 
except by the door is a thief and a robber." 
In the old way of thinking, then, the church 
was a divine government; according to the 
new thinking the church is a school, religion 
is culture, and salvation is development. 
In religion we are chary of that word cul- 
ture. We do not quite know what it is, and 
we are afraid of it, whatever it is. We are 
afraid it is a sort of veneer. Culture has 
been impracticable; generally it does not de- 
clare dividends. Generally, culture has been 
haughty and aristocratic. We cry, " A re- 
former was Luther, a miner's son, and not 
Erasmus, the first scholar of Europe." " The 
patriot was Henry, the country lawyer, and 
not Randolph, the university's pride." And 
yet culture is a great and noble word, and, 
according to the New Testament, salvation 
is culture. 

[274] 



Wi)V ?oung jHen d^o to Ci^urcl^ 

If we stick to ordinary speech we will not go 
astray. If we use the word in the field and 
garden, and speak of rose culture and apple 
culture, we have a very definite meaning. 
We see in a flash the gardener with his hoe, 
cutting down the weeds, stirring the earth, 
enriching it with fertilizers, now giving wa- 
ter, now shade, now tying fast, now pruning, 
and at last we see the stages by which the 
wild rose of the moorland has blossomed into 
the glorious beauty of the Jacqueminot. In 
the orchard the wild crab has been made into 
a Ben Davis ; in the field the wild rice has 
been made into the golden wheat and the 
dwarfed maize into the giant corn. Culture 
means growth, progress, improvements, en- 
richment. We all believe in culture for the 
husbandman. 

We all believe in culture for horses and ani- 
mals. It is the way we have come from the 
animal, not much bigger or faster than a 
sheep, to the modern thoroughbred, with his 
marvelous record for fleetness. It is the way 
we have come from the wolf to the St. Ber- 
[275] 



nard; from the wild cattle to the Durham 
and Jersey. Culture is the watchword of the 
herdsman. 

And so men lead forth music from metal and 
wood and skin : so the great organ hath come 
from the forest and up out of the mines sing- 
ing; and so the old moss-grown tree at last 
finds its soul and melody in the violin. Cul- 
ture means liberty, refinement, and transfig- 
uration. The organ or violin is not simply 
the block of wood painted, or veneered, or 
rubbed with pumice stone. It is the block of 
wood awakened from its slumber of a cen- 
tury and quickened until every fibre cries out. 
It has become a new, nobler, divine thing. It 
has been given a soul. Now, is not culture 
a noble thing? It is just exactly this we mean 
when we speak of the culture of men and 
women — the liberation of the soul and its 
deepening; the refinement and awakening of 
the higher nature ; the strengthening of pow- 
er; the cutting off of vice or weakness; the 
resurrection of the angel. So that by the 
culture of a human being wc mean " the un- 
[276] 



W^i^ ^oung Mtn <Bo to Cl^urcl^ 

f oldment and enrichment of the man by con- 
forming to and carrying out the laws of his 
nature." The full and perfect expression of 
all that is good in him. The attainment of 
his largest and noblest possibility; and the 
lesult is a strong, broad, rich, human life. 
Is not culture, then, salvation.'^ 
If I saw a little child asleep or laughing in 
a burning building, and at the risk of my 
life I should rush in and bear the child to 
safety, everybody would say that I had saved 
the child. Or if I snatched him from the path 
just as the rattlesnake was about to spring, 
everybody would hail me as the savior of the 
child. If I were to find the child in a den of 
infamy, in a house of sin and shame, among 
human beings who make prey of innocence 
and merchandise of virtue, where there was 
only temptation and ignorant and besotted 
living, and were to love that child, and teach 
it pure words, and noble thoughts, and high 
ideals, and lead it along the path of develop- 
ment until he should escape temptations with- 
out, and appetites within, and become a 
[277] 



splendid, noble man, would I not be the 
savior of the child? 

We come back to our definition, " The church 
is the school for the training of Christian 
character." 
What is a school? 

Every village schoolhouse is perpetual wit- 
ness that man is mind and can think the 
thoughts of the Infinite. Every village church 
is perpetual witness that man is soul and can 
have communion with the great over-soul. 
The church is school of the soul. 
Here is the eternal witness that man is a soul. 
Here is the Father's house, and here He keeps 
open house for His children. Here men hear 
words that draw them away from houses and 
lands and above them; that drown out sor- 
row and set in their skies lamps of hope. 
Here are set forth the laws of moral excel- 
lence so bewitchingly that you and I feel the 
better angels of our nature awakened from 
their long sleep, and we set our faces toward 
the home of the soul. Here we hear no more 
the harsh words of the stieet and market- 
[ 278 ] 



W\^V ^oung jEen d^o to Ci^urci^ 

place, but instead here is spoken the lan- 
guage of the heart. 

In the school men have text-books. Here it 
is the Bible. In the school men have certain 
great principles and purposes. Here it is the 
creed. In the school is the teacher. In the 
church the teachers are gathered. 
Here cometh Moses to be our lawgiver. With- 
out law there is a famine in the field; chaos 
in the skies; rebellion in the home and sin in 
the heart. We live by law. This nation once 
came near death. Had she gone down to 
ashes, the historian must have written, " An- 
archy slew her." As a people we are not yet 
from under the shadow of a crime against 
our rulers. When we speak of our martyrs, 
we bow our heads in the dust, and confess 
that our own lawlessness in the home, and the 
school, and the market-place has blossomed 
into violence. For years we have sowed the 
dragons' teeth. At last our passions have 
overleaped themselves and but yesterday slew 
our gentlest of rulers. In every church let 
Moses appear and teach us. 
[279] 



Here cometh Elias the prophet. There is no 
power on earth equal to winsome speech. By 
it tender maidens are won to love and hard- 
ship and self-denial. By it revolutions are 
kindled and the passion of war curbed into 
the power of peace. When the church has 
opened a pulpit she has set up a throne. And 
when the king shall come he shall rule the 
city. Laying his hands on the rising genera- 
tion he shall unlock for them the gates of 
destiny. 

Here, chiefest of all, cometh Christ. He is 
son ; the rest are reflected light. " And he 
shall save the people from their sins." Com- 
ing here our young men and maidens, like 
the young man whom Jesus loved, shall find 
hung clear and shining before them the pat- 
tern of eternal life. Here the robber shall find 
Paradise, the publican a friend, and the pure- 
hearted Nathaniel the Son of God. 
What has this school wrought? What is its 
ministry.'^ We are all familiar with its accom- 
plishments in the city. 

I shall not stop to speak of its police duty. 
[ 2S0 ] 



^^V ^oung jHen dPo to Ci^utci^ 

The churches of this city do a hundredfold 
more to keep law and order in this city than 
all the courts and all the policemen. 
I shall not speak of its intellectual power. Save 
the public school, there is no other force, or 
combination of forces, that does so much for 
the intellectual life of the people as the Chris- 
tian church. 

I shall not dwell upon its gifts and good 
works. The church is the mother of charity, 
and all the Christian associations, orphan- 
ages, and all movements for the betterment 
of the poor draw their sustenance from her. 
But, primarily and chiefly, the church is 
neither a police force, a teacher of the mind, 
nor an almoner of charity. All these things 
she does, but they are not the chief things. 
All these she does because she does a far 
deeper and nobler service. Her chief business 
is inspiration. She changes the man's sur- 
roundings by changing the man. Who can 
measure the inspirational power of the 
church ? 

Often and often have we watched a great 
[ 2S1 ] 



throng assemble in a church. We have seen 
on all sides the signs of poverty and sorrow, 
of sordid, selfish, hateful living. We have 
wondered why such people ever come to 
church. The scoffer murmurs " Supersti- 
tion," " Fear." But look now as the choir sings 
— wonder, wistfulness, worship is on every 
face. Miracles are wrought. We dwell on the 
Transfiguration mountain. Every face shines 
like a lighted candle of the Divine. Instead of 
scorn and sorrow and hatefulness, there is 
solicitude and calm and hope. Rough men 
weep for the first time in years. Sad-faced 
women forget to weep. The lonely walk as if 
they had met a friend. The animal in man 
slinks away. The Soul reigns. What is the 
mystery ? It is this : In each one of these chil- 
dren of men there is a soul, and that soul, 
neglected, robbed, and left for dead,Jiears the 
cry of the Spiritual in the music, and awakes 
into a resurrection. 

The organ is silent now. A man says, " Our 

Father," and all men bow, and most lips 

naturally, instinctively, sincerely say, " Our 

[ 282 ] 



W^V ^oung iHen (Bo to €l^utct^ 

Father." The child, a long time lost or stolen, 
knows his Father; God has become a reality. 
Again the man reads from an old book, and 
there is nothing but silence, and some are 
sobbing. Memory is now at work, and many 
a man recalls his mother's sweet face and 
good-night kiss, and his childhood prayer. 
But more than memory is here. The words 
sound to the homesick soul like far-off and 
long-forgotten music. The soul knows its 
name. Intuition hath set windows in mys- 
teries. The heavens are opened. Moses and 
Elias are come. And when at last the preach- 
er opens his lips in inspiration, " here is a new 
bard of the Holy Ghost," and men at first 
hand are made aware of duty and Deity. 
But life is not all lived in the great city. The 
foundations are underground. The country 
teacher, the country minister, and the coun- 
try parent are they who have laid the foun- 
dations of American destiny. Our great men 
have come from the farm. 
The other spring I saw a vision of supreme 
loveliness. I went across the hills to Harford 
[283] 



to stand in the shade of one hundred years. 
The church there turned that corner-stone. 
It was a day in June, and that is perfection. 
The air was as rare as the breath of flowers ; 
the sky was clear and blue, as deep as the 
sea ; the road was over the hills, and all about 
grew clusters of wild roses, such as made the 
city rose-garden ashamed. Every now and 
then peeped out from the green grass the 
red-cheeked strawberries, as tempting to the 
lips as rosy-cheeked maid when the heart is 
young. Grand elms, one hundred years old 
or more, stood guard on every hill ; in the 
valley the maples clustered, and their gnarled 
branches told the story of many a strife with 
the storms. There was a field of daisies, star- 
eyes, and walking there one could imagine 
that " he strolled amid the fields of the heav- 
ens, the stars seemed so thick and so close." 
And everywhere were golden buttercups, and 
humming bees, and singing birds; and the 
scent of clover was in the air. Surely it was 
a visit into the fields of Arden. And there 
was a richer beauty. We came to the village 
[284] 



^^V ^oung pLzn (Bo to Ci^urcl) 

nestling amid the hills. There stood an old 
colonial house that made all other houses 
seem mean. One family had lived in it, from 
father to son, for one hundred years. During 
that time, from that family, there had always 
been a deacon in the little white church. The 
church stood on the hill, and all about it 
were the graves of the dead. Not far off was 
the white academy, only two years younger 
than the church. The historian told the story 
of the one hundred years. The soil was rocky, 
the hills rough; sometimes the ground was 
moistened with sweat and then with tears. 
The life was hard. But the first house was the 
first church, and the first tax was to pay the 
first minister. They worked for bread and 
they lived for character. They showed us the 
picture of the old pastor, Adam Miller, who 
had served them for sixty years. They read 
his sermon. I heard his boys and girls, now 
old and gray, talk of him. I found out that 
from that little hamlet there had gone into 
the world one college president, one college 
professor, one governor, ten congressmen, 
[ 285 ] 



a ^ouna jman'js Eeligion 

and, besides these, many ministers, and law- 
yers, and doctors, and teachers. I learned 
that this town had not been without a boy 
at Amherst College, save for seven years, in 
seventy years, and yet this town had at no 
one time more than three hundred people. 
But when I heard the story of Adam Miller's 
long and obscure life, his poetic mind, and 
his deep-hearted sympathy, his love of books, 
and birds, and trees, and the story of his 
church, I knew the secret of Harford's life. 
I knew then why it was that this one moun- 
tain village had leavened large parts of our 
two commonwealths. It was the ministry of 
character. 

It was the power of the church, which is the 
school for spiritual life. When I saw what 
the church did for one little hamlet, and 
thought of the thousands of little hamlets, 
and the church's ministry in them all, I de- 
spaired of putting into words all that the 
church was doing for our nation and our 
home. Only imagination can leap to such a 
distance and take in such horizons. 
[286] 



W\)v ^oung jHen (Bo to Cl^urclj 

No man can tell the work of the school- 
teacher in our nation's life. Horace Mann is 
only first among these master builders, most 
of whom live in neglect and die unsung. 
Men have tried to tell what the American col- 
lege hath wrought. They have mentioned 
William and Mary's, a little college, and 
when they remembered Jefferson, Madison, 
Monroe, and fifty others, contemporaries, 
and all national statesmen, they have called 
the college " Mother of the Republic." 
They have named Harvard and Yale, and 
when they remembered their children who 
have been our presidents, princes in letters, 
prophets of reform, preachers that con- 
trolled our destiny, they have stopped, awed 
as Columbus when he first saw a new world, 
or Cortez when he first looked on a lost civ- 
ilization or Balboa when he gazed upon the 
Pacific. 

Far less can men put into words what the 
church hath wrought for our welfare. From 
the church came Plymouth; from the church 
came our democracy ; from the government 
[287] 



a ^oung jEan'ji Religion 

of a church came our Federal Repubhc. 
From the school called the church, in Vir- 
ginia, came Washington. From the school 
c^cd the church, in New Hampshire, came 
Webster. From the school called the church 
Liberty came. Hear Lecky say, "Liberty 
came to Europe in a little boat with a man 
called Paul." From the school called the 
church came the home. Hear Dean Bradley 
say, " The church first gave, and then pre- 
served, the Christian home." From the school 
called the church civilization has come. Hear 
Webster say, " The springs of American civ- 
ilization have flowed in the wake of the 
Christian pulpit." From the school called the 
church comes our noblest character making. 
Hear Ruskin say, " Precious indeed those 
thirty minutes when the preacher seeks, by 
this way and that, to convict men of sin, con- 
vince them of righteousness, and persuade 
them of eternal life. Then he knocks at the 
hard fastenings of the human heart, where 
the Master himself hath often knocked, and 
no man opened unto him, calls down those 
[ 288] 



I^^r ^oung jtten (^o to Ci^utcl^ 

darkened streets, where wisdom herself hath 
stretched forth her hand, and no man re- 
garded. Thirty minutes in which to raise the 
dead!" 

The church is the school of character. Save 
the home alone, it is the noblest institution 
of earth, maybe of the angels. Is it a little 
thing that its portals are open to you and 
your children? Can you evade your respon- 
sibility by neglecting your privilege? Is it 
strange that the young man, who is wise, 
remembers that Sunday is a Holy day, and 
entering the House of God, says " this is 
my home. Here I find rest, refreshment and 
tranquillity. I am stronger on Monday when 
I go to church on Sunday." 



[289] 



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